Friday, November 19, 2010

Progress Shots Part 2

In my previous post I shared the progress of my "Nectar" painting. This post is the progress of my second painting, "White Moth" which is a little less involved than "Nectar" was. I learned that I spent a little too much time working on the under-painting in acrylic on "Nectar" and ended up just painting over it anyways, so I thought I'd be more efficient and move straight into oil with this painting.
1. This is a picture of how I color the back of the print out with conte crayon, like I did for "Nectar". You can also see here that its printed on 4 sheets of paper.

2. The conte transfer on the canvas.

3. I decided to clear gesso over the transfer so the conte wouldn't get mixed into the oil paint (this picture is before I brushed the gesso over the entire canvas)

4. First oil paint layer--painted the skin, eyes, and hair then let dry before going on to the next layer (I used a lot of liquin as my oil paint medium so it would dry fairly quickly, although I used a lot of phthalo blue in my black, in both this and the "Nectar" painting, so that black took FOREVER to dry. Quinacridone magenta and Alizarin crimson [which I used for the eyes] also seem to take a while to dry fyi)

5. Painted gradient, moths, and orchids...unfortunately painted the moths and orchids before the gradient and they weren't dry yet so the edges got a little messed up. In retrospect, I think the best way would've been to paint the gradient first and let it completely dry before even applying the transfer. I knew that the oil paint was going to take too long to dry, though, and trying to paint the gradient with acrylics would've been difficult...so this is kinda how it ended up working for this one lol.

6. I repainted the edges on the moths' wings and orchids and more details overall to the whole piece. The kanji in the final piece was painted at the very, very end (I had to wait for the banner to dry lol)

As always, let me know if you have any questions or comments!

Progress Shots

Hello hello hello!

I really like it and find it helpful when artists post progress shots of their work so I made a couple for my newest paintings. The first is "Nectar" which is oil on canvas.
1. After scanning the sketch I did on paper, reworking a few things in Photoshop and sizing it up and printing it; I colored the back of the paper with brown conte crayon (like pastels). I then laid the print out over the top of the canvas, lined up the center and traced over the lines on the front, pushing the conte into the canvas (like carbon paper).

2. I traced over the lines with Sharpe so they wouldn't get lost while painting over them. I then realized that Sharpe, much to my disappointment, is NOT waterproof (oops!) and I had this sinking feeling that it would keep bleeding up through my painting so I applied clear gesso over the top of the Sharpe lines so they wouldn't come back through.

3. I tried making a gradient with an airbrush, but...well...it ended up just not really working lol.

4. First acrylic underpainting.

5. Second acrylic layer.

6. Third acrylic layer. I didn't like how bright and Hawaiian looking the hair+flower combo was looking so I glazed over it with some yellow ochre to tone it down and make it look more honey colored. I also thought the background looked a little bare without the gradient so I tried painting in some cherry blossom branches (although in the end I decided they were too distracting)

7. First oil paint layer. Working on making the skin tone more blended

8. Second oil paint layer. Still working on the skin tone while also working on the hair and flowers.

9. 3rd oil paint layer. Add details like the bees' wings, kanji and eyes. At the very end (the final image you can see if you click the link above) I added more to her hair to make it more dynamic and realistic.

I'm sorry that's so much writing lol! Let me know if you have any questions :D

Tuesday, October 26, 2010


The WIP shot of one of my newest works followed by the final picture! XD
Original Photo - Sideshow Sito
Model - Miss Mosh
My DeviantArt - CupcakeAshley