It's hard to believe that this is Day Five! Today I basically worked on the hair color; first I applied several layers of different shades of brown and then blended them with the colorless blending pencil. When you use a blender pencil (or mineral spirits), colors have a tendency to change a bit, one of the dark browns I had used turned to a charcoal black when blended. Lesson learned? Test out your colors with a blender on a separate sheet of paper so that unwanted results don't show up on the piece you are working on.
I didn't really like the results after using the colorless blender so I turned to a paper stump dipped into mineral spirits. This perked it up a bit, but I still felt something was amiss. I added fine lines of tuscan red, dark brown and terra cotta (Verithin pencil) and this seemed to be helping achieve what I was striving for. Yet still, I was not satisfied with what I was seeing.
Finally I fell back on my trusted and faithful tools ... my art illustration pens! I used orange, light brown and dark brown, diligently applying several lines of each. At last I was gaining the look and feel of hair.
Another nice little trick, it is always nice to see some white strands of hair in the piece, an easy way to do this is to place a piece of tracing paper over the art paper and, using a fine point ball point pen, draw the strands onto the tracing paper. When you apply your colors these lines are deep enough that they don't pick up color and provide the light strands you may want.
Having a few minutes to spare and not wanting to work on the hair any more today, I began working on the shadowing of the hands using a soft core pencil in peach.
Here are the results of today's efforts .....
I didn't really like the results after using the colorless blender so I turned to a paper stump dipped into mineral spirits. This perked it up a bit, but I still felt something was amiss. I added fine lines of tuscan red, dark brown and terra cotta (Verithin pencil) and this seemed to be helping achieve what I was striving for. Yet still, I was not satisfied with what I was seeing.
Finally I fell back on my trusted and faithful tools ... my art illustration pens! I used orange, light brown and dark brown, diligently applying several lines of each. At last I was gaining the look and feel of hair.
Another nice little trick, it is always nice to see some white strands of hair in the piece, an easy way to do this is to place a piece of tracing paper over the art paper and, using a fine point ball point pen, draw the strands onto the tracing paper. When you apply your colors these lines are deep enough that they don't pick up color and provide the light strands you may want.
Having a few minutes to spare and not wanting to work on the hair any more today, I began working on the shadowing of the hands using a soft core pencil in peach.
Here are the results of today's efforts .....
Oh, yeah ... I didn't like the way the eye on the left side of the sheet was looking so I "erased" what I didn't like using an X-acto knife blade with slow gentle strokes and then added some corrections with verithin pencils. It still needs some more work, but not today!
Take care and Happy Day!
Karen Anne
Did you scrape it off?! Interesting!
ReplyDeleteI did ... but ever so delicately. The paper I am using, by Stonehenge, is very durable ...
ReplyDeleteYou have left me breathless Karen Anne! Thank you for explaining on how to do the white hair! I am learning something new with you everyday ;o) I hope you had time for a tea break and a piece of pie ;o) LOL!
ReplyDeleteOh Stacy, I am so glad you are learning the little tips I am sharing!
ReplyDeleteAlas, no tea or pie in the house! BUT I do have Chocolate Cake!