This is part 2 from the other day's painting tutorial...
Part 1: Spirited Away: A Slightly Eccentric Tutorial
Here, I started doing some dark strands and shadows in her hair with a tiny round brush. Mostly a mix of Yarka browns.
I also started worrying about the orb the little sprite was offering the maiden. I outlined it with Yarka yellow but kept the center and the wisps around it the white of the paper.
It was right about here that I started getting distracted by texts from my good friend, Alexandra and started skipping records of each step... You can blame her. =)
First off, I began darkening the shadows of her skin, clothing, etc. I also began swooshing lots and lots of bright colors wherever I wanted.
I did a bit of skin tone and cloth detail on the little sprite, and the swooshing around the offered orb.
Right here is where I was deciding what color to paint around one side of the orb when the sound of the alert from my phone that Alexandra had texted again made me jerk out of my weird state of concentration and spill green in the wrong place!
I had a split moment of panic and urge to murder. Fortunately for Alex's life, the weird green splotch turned out to blend in nicely with the already wet reddish pant and I texted Alex to inform her that she's awesome and should startle me more often.
So she texted back "RAWWWRRR!!!" --didn't work the second time.
Sorry about the color inconsistencies! I don't scan each step because it takes me wayyyy longer, instead I take pictures in whatever light presents itself to me at the time.
Anyways, I just love adding swooshes! Can you tell it my favorite thing? I do a lot of wet-into-wet washes in this stage and I do what Alexandra calls "make backgrounds of doom"- which basically means epically detailed backgrounds... No actual doom involved. These "backgrounds of doom" require lots of tiny brushstrokes of many different colors. In this case I literally swiped a wet brush across my entire palette and used whatever color came out of it. I find this much better than going with pure colors because of the fun subtleties and interesting shades you can get.
I also paint the birds after asking Alexandra what color they should be (we miraculously text "Greenish" at the same time). And apparently Alex now thinks she co-painted this...
And here's where texting with Alex really got me distracted from progress shots! (Blame her!) As you can see, I painted in a ton more "doom," elaborating what was already laid down. The butterflies were done in a monarch-like orange (Yarka) and then accented with white gel pen (white gel pen rules). The figure was much more heavily shaded and shadowed and brought to life, and so were her clothes.
The rest of it went on as I grew less and less able to paint due to the insane cold I had. Plus, I had a crazy headache that made it really hard to continue between the sneezing and the coughing and the sniffling and the vision was getting to be all but hazy.
So here's the stopping point where I finally I left it as "Done." In my sick state, I really thought it was done. (Again, the colors are so far from the original painting's, taken with this camera in this awful light-- so the colors will change quite a bit from this monstrosity to the actual print.) Unfortunately, I put this up at my desk for a few days and after having the chance to really look at it from far away, I realize that I have to squint at it... I now see in my back-to-normal-not-sick-anymore-state that the colors are all about the same value, and since there's not enough contrast: the fairie and the painting disappear within itself.
SO!: This means, more painting of the non-sneezing variety. I know that some of you are thinking I'm just a crazy artist and am being super anal about my work. You're right. But I'm still going to work on it to make it right in my eyes.
Now hopefully some of you see why artists have the reputation that they do. =D
Next week classes start, so I will try super super hard to finish it before then!! I promise to try my best!
Stay tuned.......
Part 1: Spirited Away: A Slightly Eccentric Tutorial
I also started worrying about the orb the little sprite was offering the maiden. I outlined it with Yarka yellow but kept the center and the wisps around it the white of the paper.
It was right about here that I started getting distracted by texts from my good friend, Alexandra and started skipping records of each step... You can blame her. =)
I did a bit of skin tone and cloth detail on the little sprite, and the swooshing around the offered orb.
Right here is where I was deciding what color to paint around one side of the orb when the sound of the alert from my phone that Alexandra had texted again made me jerk out of my weird state of concentration and spill green in the wrong place!
I had a split moment of panic and urge to murder. Fortunately for Alex's life, the weird green splotch turned out to blend in nicely with the already wet reddish pant and I texted Alex to inform her that she's awesome and should startle me more often.
So she texted back "RAWWWRRR!!!" --didn't work the second time.
Anyways, I just love adding swooshes! Can you tell it my favorite thing? I do a lot of wet-into-wet washes in this stage and I do what Alexandra calls "make backgrounds of doom"- which basically means epically detailed backgrounds... No actual doom involved. These "backgrounds of doom" require lots of tiny brushstrokes of many different colors. In this case I literally swiped a wet brush across my entire palette and used whatever color came out of it. I find this much better than going with pure colors because of the fun subtleties and interesting shades you can get.
I also paint the birds after asking Alexandra what color they should be (we miraculously text "Greenish" at the same time). And apparently Alex now thinks she co-painted this...
The rest of it went on as I grew less and less able to paint due to the insane cold I had. Plus, I had a crazy headache that made it really hard to continue between the sneezing and the coughing and the sniffling and the vision was getting to be all but hazy.
So here's the stopping point where I finally I left it as "Done." In my sick state, I really thought it was done. (Again, the colors are so far from the original painting's, taken with this camera in this awful light-- so the colors will change quite a bit from this monstrosity to the actual print.) Unfortunately, I put this up at my desk for a few days and after having the chance to really look at it from far away, I realize that I have to squint at it... I now see in my back-to-normal-not-sick-anymore-state that the colors are all about the same value, and since there's not enough contrast: the fairie and the painting disappear within itself.
SO!: This means, more painting of the non-sneezing variety. I know that some of you are thinking I'm just a crazy artist and am being super anal about my work. You're right. But I'm still going to work on it to make it right in my eyes.
Now hopefully some of you see why artists have the reputation that they do. =D
Next week classes start, so I will try super super hard to finish it before then!! I promise to try my best!
Stay tuned.......
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