Contours

Prismacolor is hosting a contest on their Facebook page, where the grand prize winner may have his artwork appear on one of their 2012 tins. I decided to create a piece specifically for the contest.  A few years ago we did a makeover on a small room in our house, converting it to a den.  The walls were painted a rich terra cotta color, and one of the lamps was red stained glass.  I nicknamed it “The Red Room”, and did a piece called “In the Red Room” (12″H x 9″W Prismacolor pencil on red Artspectrum Colourfix paper, 2007).  Earlier this year I was thinking about some ideas for pieces and took a few photos for some poses, and one of these became “The Red Room, Revisited” (15″H x 10″W Prismacolor pencil on black Artspectrum Colourfix paper, December 2011).  Here’s a picture of both pieces side by side:

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Today I finalized the proof of “Daydreams” at Lizza’s Studios.  I’ve been selling prints of some of my work for a while, and Lizza’s always does the scanning and giclee prints for me.  Additionally, I use their scans for my CPSA show submissions, since their professional scans look 1000% better than what I can accomplish with either a photo or pieced together scan on my home computer. Read more »

Today I completed “Daydreams”, 12″H x 26″ W on Aubergine Artspectrum Colourfix paper.  Pencils used were mostly Prismacolors, with also quite a few Derwent Coloursofts, and Neocolor IIs used sparingly for the black areas.  All of the crazy fabric folds weren’t the hard part – I love drawing fabric; it was the sheet pattern which gave me the most difficultly.  Read more »

Moving into the home stretch.  I need to refine the sheet pattern on the right, then start putting in the fine details, including the final darks and lights.  Maybe I’ll finish it next weekend!

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This weekend I turned a corner on the picture, and hit the point where everything is drawn and I can focus on pushing in color and building value.  The pattern on the pillow is still giving me trouble, but strangely the pattern in the sheets is coming together on its own.  I decided to hit the piece with a layer of fixative before continuing work early today, because it was getting pretty waxy and difficult to see how dark some areas were.  I’m always a little nervous about doing that too early, because the paper becomes slicker overall, but it seemed to work okay.  I also encountered the usual paradox where my darks didn’t seem dark enough, but in actuality I needed to make all of my lights lighter.

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Slow going, but steady progress.  The pattern in the sheet is going to drive my bonkers, but I feel the angles and lines it makes really add to the movement of the composition.  I think I’m happiest with how the hand turned out – I was worried about the foreshortened hand being front and center, but that part went actually surprisingly easily.  The lower right hand portion of the picture still has the least amount of work done, just with blocking and a few glazes of jade green to color correct.  You can see the pattern of wrinkles in the sheets starting to form.

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I’ve been working steadily on the piece that I prepared the swatches for in one of my previous posts.  The finished piece will be a panoramic 26″ w x 12″ H on Aubergine Colourfix paper.  If it turns out well, it will be one of my submissions for this year’s CPSA show.  I love to draw twists, turns, and folds in fabric, and this piece has plenty of it!  Most of my work so far has been on the figure, and with different stages of blocking in for the fabric. On the flat portion of the sheet on the right there’s just basic geometric shapes right now where the wrinkles and shadows are, but the crumpled comforter is fully blocked in and has some initial refinements, and I’ve started adding details closest to the figure.

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I’m just getting underway on a new piece.  It has an interesting panoramic crop, which is somewhat different for me, with a final planned size of 26″ W x 12″ H.  I’ll be working on my favorite paper, Colourfix, in a color that I haven’t used much: Aubergine (usually I work on Storm Blue or Fresh Gray).

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Finished!  Time to complete was 9 days, probably around 30 hours.  After coating the piece with fixative, and letting it dry, I did some color correction throughout, and then final detail work.  I always try to avoid using black until the very end; it’s my trump card for values, and once I play it, I can’t go any darker.  You can see how the hair has more definition from where the blacks were introduced.  I’m happy with how it turned out – I really wanted something softer, which worked with the waxiness of the Neocolors, to have a more painterly feel to it.  Now I just need to mat it with a backing and place it into a plastic sleeve.  If you like it, you can bid on it at the CPSA Silent Auction, which is July 29th at the 18th Annual International Exhibition in Santa Clara, California.

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A couple of hours Friday and Sunday working on color balancing, especially the skin tones, and further refining the face and hair.  Haven’t done much yet with the lace – but that will be last so I don’t have to rework it several times for color and value balancing.  Starting to come together.  More updates to come later in the week.

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Still figuring out what I’m doing with Neocolors.  I decided to do a second wash for a few parts, and discovered (unfortunately) that the first wash will come off when rewet.  I completely erased the left arm, as well as some of the darks in the dress!  After some struggling I’ve fixed the oops, and have been working on getting the values and colors in the skin tones correct.  I find it very difficult to force colors into light Colourfix paper  - I tend to work with dark tones because of this.  Since this piece is on a lighter tone, it’s been a wrestling match.  The dress has been the biggest struggle.  Overall it’s still on track though – still plenty of color correcting and value building to do.  I haven’t done much yet with the lace of the dress, but I’ll work on the details once I get the values and color balance worked out.

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