Yesterday I worked on the details, first repainting some of the skirt and duster that was were covered by the new background, then getting back to the oil pastels for the face. A final touch was painting the oil pastels with turpenoid to create the stocking line design, as well as outlining the skin and stocking areas.
It’s now completed and available here.
Tag Percolate
New Art – ‘Maid for You’
work progress – new background
As promised in last night’s blog, here’s the photo of the new color for the background…
Also, I’ve noticed I’ve been formatting the photos for this image as though the painting was 23×29″, but it’s actually 22×30″, so the earlier shots probably look a bit squatted. Oh well. As long as the final scan gets the proportions right, it won’t matter. 
work progress – background change
This morning, before I did too much detail work, I tried to clean up the paint bleed from yesterday’s frustrating airbrush work on the stockings. Go figure, the background paint was coming up more than the bleed paint, so a fix was not looking good. Trying to paint over it to cover would be difficult since the bleed color is darker than the background (even more so with some of it lifted now).
I took a step back and looked at the whole piece at this point. I wasn’t happy with the lack of contrast between the background and the skin now. Also, the white areas didn’t stand out much (especially the white feather duster). Outlining would help, but still wouldn’t give it much punch. So, I went back to the computer, opened the reference image in photoshop, and began reworking the background color to see what might work better. By deepening and darkening the same colors (magenta and vermilion) I was able to give it a much better contrast and visual interest.
Now, the fearful attempt on the actual painting. I needed to cover the image with masking, so there’s any number of potential problems that can happen. First, would it even stick to the oil pastels, especially once the airbrush is blowing across it? And if it did hold, would it pull up anything once I remove it? I couldn’t stand to keep the painting as it was, so either I chance it, or toss it. So, I go for it, carefully applying and cutting the masking over the entire piece. It seems to stick, so I mix the acrylic paint for the airbrush and begin. With a sigh of relief, it holds without a single edge flipping loose. I covered the majority of the background with a mix of magenta and black (reddish purple is how it ends up), and then mix vermilion with crimson and black for the bottom (the crimson keeps the mix from becoming a mud color). I round the edge of the piece with a light spray of black, as well as hitting the shadow beneath her feet. I finish it off as before, with a mix of pearl and red ’sparkles’ (showing much more against a darker color).
I peeled the masking off as soon as I could, and another sigh of relief to see nothing was damaged by it. It’s still drying a bit, so no picture tonight, but tomorrow first thing I’ll get that up, and hopefully finish it all by evening.
work progress – troubling paint work, but moving forward
It seems what I gained in Thursday’s productivity was lost yesterday and today. Friday started fine, with painting more details in the hair and skirt, and then painting the feather duster. I had been wondering what method to use for the stockings. Airbrushing is my common way, since it creates a nice subtle texture that differs from the skin in the end. But I had already removed all the masking, I hadn’t cut pieces to go around the stockings only. So, I foolishly thought I could get away with painting it. There isn’t that much detail, so if I applied the gouache in a watery layering method, it should work. I should know better by now that me and paint (on anything besides small detail areas) no longer work well together. I still don’t know why things go as bad as they do, but they continue to do so each and every time. This time, I couldn’t get it to blend well enough, so I added more paint, but that made a bigger mess. I ended up covering both legs in a flat skin tone and let it dry. I figured I could still salvage it by airbrushing over it. I cut new masking, then began airbrushing acrylic over the gouache. The gouache dried darker than I wanted (at least for the light areas) so I needed to get the acrylic fairly solid over it to bring it up. Well, the airbrush mix was too watery and began to run down the masking. I blotted best I could, but it wasn’t drying all too fast on the board either. I think the gouache beneath held some of the water instead allowing it to dry. I consider that an odd thing though, since when I typically paint with gouache, it dries before I can get more than an inch of paint on an area. The paint gods are having quite the laugh at my expense, it seems.
So, I finish the airbrushing, but it’s not looking right at all. And to worsen things, when I remove the masking, it pulls up some paint (lucky it’s not strong enough to pull paper, too!). There also was some leaking beneath the edges of the masking, so that’s going to be a bit of work to fix.
My only choice now is to color the legs with oil pastels, so I paint on the textured gesso over them (and cover all the skin areas as well)…
Today, I got going on the oil pastels, starting at the top (head) and working down, section by section. For the skin areas, I used colored pencils for the color and then oil pastels to blend. For the stockings though, since they already had a dark base now. I went directly with the oil pastels. This also should give them a slightly different color palette than the skin, and hopefully keep them looking like stockings and not just bare legs.
Before I could finish today, though, the paint came back to haunt me once more. I had blocked off the feet with masking (I couldn’t reuse the masking from yesterday, as that stuff was ruined) to protect the white of the shoes from the pastels. As I peeled them off, the left foot pulled up the paint and gesso from the stocking area of the foot. I’ve cleaned it off and re-applied the gesso, but I’ll have to wait until tomorrow now to get the pastels on there.
Otherwise, all the skin and stocking areas are now covered, and I can get to the detailing tomorrow (hopefully finishing the whole piece)…
work progress – airbrush and paint starts
Yesterday was a productive day. After getting the drawing done in the morning, I was able to mask and airbrush the background in the afternoon. I used a light tint mix of magenta acrylic for most of it, with the bottom section a light tint of magenta mixed with vermilion acrylic. I added a few darker streaks on an angle to give it some style, then finished it with a mix of pearl and red ’sparkles’. Once dry, I removed the masking, then outlined everything in relative colors to the area (ie sienna brown for the skin, gray for the white pieces, tan for the stockings)…
Later in the day I began painting. I worked on the face, adding some flesh around the eyes and mouth to ease the blend of the oil pastels later. Then I painted the hair with black and some brown gouache. I continued the black into the bra, mixing some flesh and brown for the sheer panel on the side. Before painting the skirt, I blocked in some dark flesh where the legs are underneath. Then I added the skirt in streaking lines, giving it a woven and lace design. It still needs a bit more, I think. Again, I added some flesh around the edges of everything for the blending.
designing new project
I have this loose rule with my work, I try to never paint the same model twice in a row. My reasons – it keeps a variety in my gallery; it keeps the images fresh to me, as I’m not ‘redoing’ the same face; and it spreads out the photo shoots to last longer. So, with that in mind, although I have a drawing ready to be painted from last week, I avoided it due to it being the same model I just painted (Kneely). I will get to it, but will put it aside for a few weeks, or until I cannot create any new ideas elsewhere. I was close to feeling this way, but managed to push through and find something else that might be fun.
The image I came up with is a sexy maid concept, from a shoot I had a few months ago (with Percolate). I had trouble with the pose and outfit working in a way I liked. I ended up piecing together a total of 5 photos to create this one. Photoshop is a great tool for playing with ideas, but it’s still tricky to make it all fit together in a believable way (lucky I don’t move around much during shoots, so my perspective and position are relatively the same in each photo). One issue I had was her left hand – she wore black net gloves, and the hand is right in front of the black net skirt, so it seemed to disappear. I liked the black gloves, so avoided changing it at first, but in the end I made it white net instead. Other things I altered were the skirt’s height (which meant I needed more leg to show, so I had to find bare legs in the same position), and added the right arm (original only showed the elbow). I’m sure I could have simply drawn these adjustments freehand without photo reference, but I feel better if I can find real reference, as I feel it keeps the model ‘intact’ and eases my view of the lighting. Had I not found reasonable pieces to fit, I would’ve ‘faked’ them then…
…
model – Percolate
New art completed – Peppermint Sticks
Today I worked on all the details, mostly in the face and hands, using colored pencils and oil pastels.
I’m satisfied with it, so it’s available now in the store here.
work progress 12/26 – roughing in the skin
Yesterday I hit a wall when considering how to handle the garland. With so many defined little lines, I knew the oil pastels would be troublesome, and pencils would look too rough (unless I blended the heck out of them). So, that left paint, and I have not had great luck with extended areas of paint lately. Funny how I spent 3 or more years creating over 100 pieces with nothing but paint, and just a few years later I cringe at doing just a section.
Anyway, I mixed the skin tones in gouache and covered the torso where the garland would go. WHen I started to add in some white to blend up the highlights, it got ugly, and I got frustrated. I walked away and took a break for the day.
Today, I started anew, and knowing paint would not work well for me, I got the idea to use the airbrush. Since much of the skin contours would be lost beneath the garland, I didn’t need it to be too refined, so the airbrush should work well. I mixed the colors, this time in acrylics. This will make it easier to paint the garland over the top without it mixing in.
With the skin set, I began painting little lines of gray gouache along the garland lines, creating the base for the tinsel. Then I added some white bits over that, and went back over it with a moist brush, blending some of that in. I finished the garland off with a few more gray lines and white lines here and there.
I spent the remainder of the day working in the skin, first painting in the textures gesso, then using colored pencils to rough in the color and contours, and finally oil pastels to blend it all together. With luck, I’ve blended the pastels well enough that the painted skin areas arn’t any different than the pastels skin…
work progress 12/24 – painting
Today I worked on all the painted areas. I started as I usually do, with the face, using gouache. Then the hair, layering browns before adding the black over the top.
Next, I used acrylics to paint the pants. I mixed an off-white (mostly white, with the slightest touch of gray and red) for the light stripes, and crimson for the red stripes. To get the thin lined stripes, I used a colored pencil. With both stripes covered and shaded, I then used a white acrylic in the airbrush for the highlights over all. I finished the pants with some colored pencils, refining the shadows as well as deepening some of the color.
I painted the belt and shoes with gouache, starting with a bright red base, then adding some black to it to blend the shading, followed by white for the highlights…
New image designed and started
The shorter days of Winter really take their toll on my creativity. I sat staring at images for the past few days trying to find something to inspire my next piece, with little luck. Thankfully yesterday I remembered a concept I had thought about a year or two ago – using candy cane stripes on an outfit. With that in mind, I found a model and pose that I thought would be interesting, and started designing.
It was a little trick to get the stripes to wrap properly, but I think I got it now. I played around with what else to do with the piece and decided to keep it in a holiday theme, so she’ll be wearing tinsel garland on top (and possibly some holly leaves, but not certain on that yet).
I got it drawn on the board this morning…
model – Percolate
With that done, I masked out the image, then proceeded to airbrush the background with acrylics. I started with a light aqua color, focusing most of it in a circle just below center. Then I filled out the rest with a true blue, blending it toward the circle. I chose these as they’re ‘wintery’, and the deep, bright colors will be a nice contrast to the light stripes on her legs…
