Watching - Tiger WIP & Question Need Help

Ahhh, boy does it feel a lot better doing something more inside my comfort zone.  Just couldn't make myself deal with green today (ok there is a little I did on this, but not like the landscapes).  Decided even with the velour I was going back to work on Watching.  Saw a documentary last night on lions with some previews of a tiger show to come and got excited.

Speaking of the velour, I think I quite like that surface a whole lot better than the sanded paper.  I am going to try several other brands and the pastel mat as well to see if I can find a surface that feels smoother.  I got more Colorfix sheets to have to use up, so there will be more pics on it and maybe by the end I'll know what to do with it.  Fingers crossed.

Today was sketching in definitions, where the black and white zones should be to form the cheek and muzzle areas.  Still playing with underpainting on the beige zones - I am still undecided on what the color and order lay down should be for those areas.  Also missing an individualized hair look. 

Oh oh I am off, this is big error, but nothing I can do since I went ahead and put in the blacks on the top of the forehead.   You can't erase on this and I think that trying to go over it with lighter colors would just make mud.  So think best thing to do is try to increase the black zones, maybe I can get away with that.  I really want the focus on the eyes, so putting the top of the head more in shadow or dark colors would push it back, so black might just be the answer or making bigger leaves?  Think what put me off is this is where I ad libbed adding the leaves.  I do have to find some other way to transfer a complex cartoon better than it worked this time.  Leaves me too much to freehand placements to guess on.  I am pretty excited about this piece so hope that I can resurrect it.

QUESTION: do I try to put shadow areas under the leaves or just leave them as accents. They are pretty small leaves so I am inclined to just leave them without shadow - but bigger grouping is in the center so what are your thoughts please

Comments

hmuxo said…
This is coming along beautifully, Nelvia...I know what you mean about how its difficult to erase those blacks in the velour..... What I do is paint the darks lighter until I know if I want it there.. then darken it later on....
December 4, 2014 at 8:32 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bold woman's portrait

Image
Bold Ok, for today's portrait I went out of the box and decided to try a different look and approach. This is on watercolor paper, I applied a layer of paper collate over it (you can see that some of it started lifting - so got to use more medium to glue it next time)  Anyway then I tried to leave part of that under collage showing, even in the face.  Went back in and applied several more light lawyers of transparent and opaque paint and then put in the hair using my dagger bus.   Gosh that brush makes hair so much easier While this might not the best example what are your thoughts to taking portraits this more dynamic direction? Thanks for stopping by and taking a look.
Read more

Her Highness mixed media woman portrait

Image
Her Highness   I just absolutely loved the expression on this lady and knew I wanted to try to capture her elegance and serenity.  I knew that I didn't want an exact portrait and decided to try another mixed media piece.    I added blobs of paint and used my large scraper to make the areas of color.  Just put paint on a piece of watercolor paper.  Then I inscribed and mixed the colors together with the end of my brush and got all the wavy lines (in real life they actually stand up so there is a 3D effect to the background).  Where I thought I wanted the face I really scraped most of the paint off, and ended up with color blotches and tones, and if you look in the forehead you can sort of see the design that was left.  I thought it would add some variance to the skin tones. I also want to keep her very soft so I tried to stay in the pastel tones, even with the lips.   Once I got shadows and lights added in, and went over it with some skin tone and more blue colors I let
Read more

In The Garden acrylic painting Redo

Image
In The Garden Original painting Well, thankfully I have some folks who tell me what they think.  I value their objective opinions very much and appreciate that they feel strongly enough to tell me when they feel something is off.  In the original painting no one liked the addition of the yellow flower, and felt it pulled the eye and overshadowed the focal point.   Well, I sat on it a bit and starting playing with how I could work it back into the composition.  I wanted the third flower, but I couldn't just really dull down the yellow.  As you an see I ended up making it darker in shadows and then burying it into the foliage.  I like it better because it now looks, to me, like it is part of the picture instead of just being put on in the corner.  Moral of the story, fix it first because it is hard to come in and match colors later. What do you think of the changes - for better or worse? Thanks much for stopping by and taking a look.
Read more