Splish Splash
model – Mackenzie
Tag Mackenzie
new art completed – “Barely Innocent”
I spent the day working on all the details, as usual, and was left with the skirt to finish. The paint strokes now shows more than ever compared to the smooth completed skin, so something had to be done. It was too late now to airbrush (masking on top of oil pastels is never a good idea), so I had to find another direction. I decided to use oil pastels, since I have some blues that I never use anyway. The board wasn’t primed on the ksirt like I did the skin, but since there was a painted base, any transparency wouldn’t show. With the skirt nicely covered and blended for shading, I added the detail stitching, then painted the fluffy edging (originally my intention was for the skirt to suggest an ocean with the wave design, and the edge would be the foam) using thick acrylic white.
It’s now complete, scanned, and ready to view here.
Barely Innocent
work update for the past week
I’ve had computer issues this week, so blogging hasn’t been priority. Hopefully it’s working now long enough to get this all updated.
First, last Tuesday I had a photo shoot with a new model to me, Krystal, which went quite well. Before getting into all the new photos though, I had one concept designed and nearly ready, so I continued with it. This one doesn’t have a real story or character behind it like many of my more recent pieces, but rather just a cute pose and look. Once I had the outfit created and color choices made, I drew it on the illustration board…
model – Mac
Next, I masked it out and airbrushed the background with acrylics. I lightly covered the entire board with a soft pink, then added some red and magenta and covered the edge and added a soft design. The color looked a bit too bright/vibrant once dry, so I mixed some gray into the leftover mix and coated the whole board lightly to dim it down…
I then worked on all the paint work. The face and hair were done with gouache as usual, and I thought I might be able to hand paint the corset, since the design was in narrow strips. But of course the paint doesn’t adhere much at all to this board (I love the smoothness of these boards for their lack of added texture to the piece in the end, but it does pose many frustrating problems along the way), so after basically blocking it in I decided to finish it with the airbrush. I knew I would airbrush the stocking as well, so I painted their details in first, then masked out everything else and airbrushed those areas.
The skirt was also a bit of trouble to paint, but I decided not to airbrush it, at least not yet. I then painted the shoes, and finished by coating the skin areas with the textures gesso tinted with a bit of brown (it’s not pretty, but it gets the job done)…
Next step is blocking in the skin using colored pencils and oil pastels. I noticed afterward that the skin nearly matches the background now, so I will be working on adjusting the color and shading as I finish the piece…
That was a couple days ago, and I’ve been working on the details to complete it. I feel it is done now, and the last struggle was a title, but I now have that as well. I should have it scanned and available later today (assuming my computer cooperates).
New art added today – “Miss Muffet”
As noted in the previous post, I worked on the details yesterday, finishing up the piece. The face at that angle was a challenge, trying to balance the shading and get across the contouring proper. After that, I completed the fingers, then added an outline to most of the model to bring her forward, and also get that illustrated look a bit.
This morning I scanned it, and it is now available here.
Miss Muffet
work progress – skin blocked in
Yesterday had a few setbacks, plus I had a photo shoot with model Kym, but I did manage to get the skin areas blocked. Today I worked on the detailing, and should have the finished piece up tomorrow…
