Contours

Workshop Prep

This Saturday I will be giving a workshop for CPSA DC115 titled “Evoking Mood with Neocolors and Colored Pencil”, and I’ve got an area in my studio filled up with all my prep materials. Like laying out pieces prior to a show, it’s always fun to see everything all at once, together. Read more »

Apr 21, 2010 -

Finished – 4/21

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.

Apr 20, 2010 -

News

Work in Progress Update – 4/20

Just about done! Tomorrow I’ll hit it with a coat of fixative, then do a few tweaks and further color correction.

Apr 19, 2010 -

News

Work in Progress Update – 4/19

Picking up some steam, now. There’s a point in every drawing where the hardest parts are done, and you get to play with colors and details. Feels like I’ve reached it with this update. Started to refine the lace, although there’s still a lot of color correcting to do there, and some detail work. Looking forward to dabbling on Tuesday (although it will be competing with my Lost addiction, so I probably won’t be as productive!)

Apr 18, 2010 -

Work in Progress Update – 4/18

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.

Apr 16, 2010 -

Work in Progress – Update 4/16

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.

Apr 14, 2010 -

Work in Progress – Update 4/13

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.

Apr 12, 2010 -

News

Work in Progress – CPSA Silent Auction

I’ve been invited to participate in this year’s CPSA Silent Auction. Two years ago I also participated, and created a work using one of the alternate poses from the larger piece that was accepted that year. In that case the larger piece was Cascade, and the auction piece was Respite. I like the idea of doing a sister piece for the silent auction – hopefully this year Opaline Dreams will be accepted, and my auction piece will be the sister piece.

Mar 24, 2010 -

Behind the Scenes

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Behind the Scenes – Opaline Dreams

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.

Dec 26, 2009 -

Colored Pencil