Oh boy, I always said it was a-comin': the day when I made the first "Painting" post. Yay!
As I may have mentioned before, I don't paint a whole lot but enjoy mixing mediums. This originally was intended as a quick and to-the-point monotone watercolor painting in sepia; however, I completed the painting and figured I'd add in a few details.
So I whipped out the pastel and charcoal pencils and went to town on the painting. I always liked to use charcoal over ink for the textural effects, and it worked similarly here. There's actually quite a variety of colors here: about 9, I believe. I left them kind of subtle to keep with the original plan but I think they definitely add something.
The painting is on Crescent 310 illustration board. It's an okay surface for this sort of thing: not as absorbent as good watercolor paper (the water WILL run) but tough and it holds its shape well even under my "soak it" approach. Crescent recommends it for pencils and not wet media but it is a multi-purpose board, so there you have it.
*UPDATE*
Added in a background with some sort of brown paint that was on my palette mixed into a bunch of Cadmium Red.
Sexy.
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Love this monochromatic painting! Shana looks as beautiful as always, you are so lucky to have her a model. I am yet to come up with an inspiring model that is not a photograph taken by someone else.
ReplyDeleteI also love the close-crop composition. Most of my portraits, and come to think of it other paintings as well, are closely cropped. I just think it is such an engaging way to show something, and such composition gets edges brought into the play. My most serious critic - my dad - gets on my case about that, prefers classically positioned heads and shoulders with hair and lots of room around. I find it boring - who needs all this background...
I noticed that lately you haven't posted on WC much. What's about that?
Alex
Thanks for commenting, Alex!
ReplyDeleteThis time the girl is actually Sarrah (two Rs for some reason), who has a similar hairstyle and way of posing. This is the first time I've done anything of her: the reference was a little risque so I cropped it down to the head.
I agree with you on the compositions: I always preferred to have more detail in the face and less background, seems like you can show more personality that way. Besides, the background is tiresome to do and one more thing to worry about messing up on, it's just plain awful when you've got the face finished and the background doesn't turn out well.
I haven't been on WC because I haven't been drawing much and have been busy with school all day four days a week so most of my weekends are devoted to resting. This is only the 3rd or 4th thing I've finished in 2010, actually.
A cook, a poet and a darn good artist. What more could we ask for in a blog? I like this mixed media and how you developed it. Your realism is stunning in your graphite work. I like the combination, here, where I can see evidence of you building the composition.
ReplyDeleteThanks for visiting and commenting!
ReplyDeleteI suppose you could always ask for a musician as well. Unfortunately, my internet connection is too slow to upload videos/clips, :D