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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On Tuesday night I worked on blocking in the first Prismacolor layers.  Always a challenge to get anything done on Tuesdays when Lost is on!  It’s starting to take shape.  Should get a few more hours in on Wednesday.

Opaline Dreams was interesting in that it was my first attempt at mixing Prismacolors with Neocolor IIs, which are water soluable.  Neocolors look much like a Crayola crayon when you hold them (although they are still considered a colored pencil – imagine the ‘lead’ of a colored pencil wrapped in paper, instead of wood).  It takes a bit of experimenting on a test scrap of paper to determine the right combination of crayons to achieve your color, especially since, once you wet them, the color will be very intense.  For this piece, I intended to use the Neocolors only for the darks; this was because I really felt the gray green color of the Colourfix paper was a key part of the skin tones and fabric, and wanted it to show through in the lights.  Since Colourfix can be difficult to get a full range of values on, having solid darks on a lighter paper also helped address this.

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20″ x 12″ Prismacolor colored pencil and Neocolor II on Fresh Gray Colourfix paper.  Completed 2010.

7″ x 5″ colored pencil on Pastelbord.  2010.

9″ x 12″ Prismacolor colored pencil on storm blue Colourfix paper.

7″ x 5″ Prismacolor colored pencils on gray Pastelbord.  Completed 2009.