Today was very productive. With a simple background and no wardrobe to paint, this step of the process was quick and easy.
I started the morning masking the image, then airbrushing the background with a very, very light gray-lavender acrylic. In designing this image in photoshop, this background helped bring out the highlights in the model, as well as giving the overall image a nice tone.
Next, I freehand airbrushed five colors for the rainbow – light red, yellow, light aqua, light blue, and light violet. To finish the background, I airbrushed a mix of green and purple iridescent acrylics overall…
The remainder of the day was spent painting. I started with the face, painting the eyes and mouth (I once again added skin tone around the areas to help blending later, but I found myself coloring in the entire face to help see the tones better). Next, the hair, building up layers of watery gouache browns from ochre-red down to dark brown and black. I then painted the waist chain and charms with gray gouache, adding bits of black for shading, and white for highlights. While the black was out, I also painted the shoes. Then I used green watercolor for the rabbit’s foot, accents on the shoes, and the emerald in the clover charm. Again, I painted some skin tone around all these areas for later blending (including almost all of the foot areas, as they’re fairly small and I might not get much oil pastels in there).
With time remaining tonight, I was able to get to the textured gesso for the skin…
work progress – paint and gesso completed
new image designed and ready today
The last few days I’ve once again been looking through photos in search of new ideas/concepts. I have a few muddling around in my head, but not sure if they’re ready yet. While looking through images from Stacy’s shoot, I saw some with a cute expression and the phrase ‘charmed I’m sure’ came to me. So, with that now a focus, I was able to pin down once pose that I felt worked best. The photo set was nudes, so I considered adding an outfit or accessories, but nothing seemed really useful or necessary for the concept. Instead, I gave her a simple waist chain with some charms attached, and a rabbit’s foot on a bracelet. The background will have a very subtle (hopefully) rainbow flowing toward her…
New art completed – “Luscious”
I started on the details last night, and spent the whole day today completing them. Mostly done with colored pencils, I did bring out the turpenoid and oil pastels for a few fine details at the end. I also touched up some painted areas, deepening the color of the lips and darkening the black leather on the bra. I had considered earlier if I would do any more texturing to the fur, but it feels right to me as is.
It is now available here.
work progress – skin blocked in
It took some time to get all those large areas covered, especially with my finger tips getting sore, so I didn’t get it all done yesterday. Today I finished it off, covering the abdomen with the colored pencils and oil pastels. The skin is now covered, so next step is detailing, which I should get started still today. It should be finished some time tomorrow…
work progress – painting it up
Last night and today I spent working on all the paint areas. I started with the face, painting the eyes and lips with mostly gouache (and some watercolor on the lips). Next, I painted the hair, working layer after layer to build up the depth, darkness, and apparent detail (I don’t attempt to capture every hair, but rather try to give it a natural texture).
I then painted the black leather of the bra with watery layers of black and gray gouache. The highlights are mostly the paper showing through, so it’ll have a slightly different color tone than the skirt. The skirt was next, but once again I had trouble facing a large area with water. I just can’t get a smooth coat of color across without either the water evaporating, or the brush leaving streaks. Before getting overly frustrated, I masked it off and reverted to airbrush. Starting with black acrylic, I coated the area lightly, then built it up until the shadow areas were near solid. I then mixed some gray and turquoise in and hit the mid-toned areas. On the next pass, I kept adding more and more white to the mix, working up the highlights softly. I then decided to go for the ’sparkle’ finish, so I mixed steel and aqua iridescent acrylics and sprayed over the whole skirt, hitting the highlighted areas more than the shadows.
Once all that was dry, I used some acrylic black with a brush to define the creases in the material more. While I had it out, I mixed the black with a lot of water and washed the leopard spots on the bra (I played around with a few other patterns, but this still worked the best for me). Next, I mixed a turquoise-green gouache and washed it over the bra. I dry-brushed a bit on top of this with the same color to give it a hint of fur texture. I may use some colored pencils later to enhance that further. I finished out the leopard print with a wash of green within the spots.
The final bit I did today was adding white highlights to the skirt. If I have time still tonight, I hope to get the textured gesso down on the skin areas so I can begin blocking that in tomorrow…
work progress – new image begins
I had designed and drawn this new piece the other day (see yesterday’s blog). I masked and airbrushed the background yesterday, starting with a magenta mix (lightened and dulled using white and gray) for the middle of the piece. Then I filled out from there using a purple mix (with a touch of gray to dull, and ultramarine to deepen). I considered adding sparkles as I often do, but the color was so brilliant and fun, I didn’t think it needed anything more. The leather skirt has a sparkly sheen to it in the original photo, so maybe I’ll give it a touch of sparkles, we’ll see…
“Snack Break”
I added a last few touches to the face today, but doing any more would be a mistake, so I’ll call it done. I’m not perfectly happy with it (maybe some day I’ll return and do it again), but I think it works. It has a slight rough texture to it (in appearance, not actual touch) that’s a bit more painterly than I normally do, but some may appreciate that more.
It is now available here.
work progress – still struggling
Okay, the face is getting better, but it’s been so over-worked that it may never be all that it could be. That said, I may have managed to get somewhere near what I originally intended. We’ll see.
For now, here’s the face from this morning, after I blocked in the oil pastels with the improved eyes and mouth…
Meanwhile, to take my mind off the frustration and also give me a fresh perspective, I’ve found a new image to paint next. The pose interested me, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted from it. I played around with different hair styles, colors, and crops, but her hair and color always won out. It was a full body shot at first, but cropping it to the hips felt better (the legs, although nice, didn’t do anything for the pose nor the design). The bra has a leopard print on it, and I’ve changed it to an aqua-green color (from the original tan-orange), but I didn’t bother drawing the spots yet, as I may still change it to some other pattern (maybe)…
model – Gia
I was able to mask out the image and airbrush the background tonight, but didn’t get a photo of it yet. I’ll give the details for that tomorrow.
work progress – problem hopefully solved
Last night I started going through photos for the next painting, taking time away from the problematic current piece. Today, I bounced between designing ideas, and re-looking at that one in hopes of finding a clue to its ‘wrongness’. I finally found that one of the biggest problems was the eyes and mouth, which I had painted days ago. They were distorted and not in proper proportions. I repainted them, and that helped quite a bit, but the overall face was still ugly. Trying to add more and more oil pastels on top only makes it worse, the colors all blending into a very dull, awful gray (and despite this skin needing to be gray-ish, this was not a good thing). So, in order to get it right, I scraped the face and neck back down to the board. Once cleaned off, I re-applied the textured gesso to the area, and now await it drying before getting this piece finished. Hopefully this time I’ll get the right colors going and make it look the way I want it.
Until then, I’ll go back to designing, juggling a few ideas to see which hits me to be the next painting.
work progress – can’t complete
I worked on details today. The eyes gave me much trouble, I ended up repainting them 2 or 3 times. The face also got overworked, and now I can’t tell what’s right and what’s wrong with it. The dull gray color is throwing me off as well, but I don’t think that’s the crux of the problem. It just looks flat and unrealistic.
So, I’m taking a break from it for a bit. Perhaps some time away will give me the perspective to finish it proper.
