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But when you gotta, you just gotta.
My girlfriend and I like to create art together sometimes, and this weekend we found ourselves with precious little on the calendar, so we agreed it was time to do some painting. I’m really happy that we did. It feels like it’s been too long for me.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the digital work. I love the speed that it allows me to work. That quickness placates my ADDish nature. I can be done with a project before it really bores me. But, like I said, sometimes you just have to get your hands dirty.
I should have spent a little longer laying the image down on the canvas board. I think that I placed it a bit low. I’m not beating myself up too terribly badly as I was thinking of adding some text across the top when I’m done, so the low arrangement of the image will allow for that.
Step 2 (sorry for the glare) shows that I’ve completely gone over the line work now that the image is on the canvas board. This took a little while, and I started finding that I was smudging the graphite all over the image in the lower right hand corner. I erased all the smudges with a gum eraser before applying a fixative layer and then a simple wash.
This image is steampunk themed, so I want to keep it mostly in brown tones – almost like a sepia toned photo in order to build the ambiance. It’s also fantasy though, so we’ll find (later that I let some other colors creep in a bit. The wash really seems to help with the mood though.
I continue with this little trick in Step 4 – using girl’s hair color as a base for the Fey Troll’s shirt. I’m also paying attention to where I place color in an attempt to keep the image colors balanced. Too much of one color in one direction can cause an image to visually slide on the canvas. Of course, I don’t want everything perfectly balanced either. Balanced = boring. There needs to be a little motion to keep the viewer’s interest.
We’re starting to see those brighter colors creep in that I mentioned earlier. I may make them a little more subdued when I see them tomorrow. I’ll post some more updates as I work.
Thanks for following along! Please let me know if there’s any questions you have about this process and I will answer them as best I can.
Love the previews… looking forward to these finished!
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