Beach Scene WIP - Day 10

I began today by finishing the hands, complete with sand!  The shoe was next followed by the feather in the sand castle.  Moving along nicely today! 

After studying the illustration awhile, I decided to darken the sand and make it a bit more grainy ... more like real sand.  I accomplished this by lightly rubbing the side of the lead (used several different colors of brown) over the sandy area and the little "hills" still remaining in the paper picked up just a tiny bit of added color and provided more of a sand look. 

Next I got one of Jim's old glass ball floats to use as a reference and noticed it has all kinds of little bubbles in the glass; so I took a piece of tracing paper and laid it over the, yet uncolored, glass float and with an ink pen I drew little circles and dots on the tracing paper which left indentations on the art paper.  I then began coloring in the float with varying colors of bluish green to deep greens, after which I used a very pale green pencil to blend all the layers together and achieve a glassy effect.    I think it looks OK, what do you think?

When I began coloring in her face I started off with my Prismacolor soft core pencils and quickly noticed the lead was a bit too soft to get the detail I was seeking.  So....out comes the museum putty and I removed the first four layers I had applied.  Put those pencils back and pulled out my Prismacolor Verithin pencils and began again.  I have about four layers on her face at this point and find these pencils are providing the softness and delicacy I am looking for.

I am finished for today and am going to kick back, relax and will be studying the drawing and plan how I want to proceed tomorrow.    Then I'll have to figure out "What's for dinner?"!

Happy Day!
Karen Anne