Here’s the third piece from my three color series. I used Cobalt Blue, Alizarin Crimson, and Yellow Ochre only on them. They’ve been quite fun to do and I’ve even reduced them down to fit as covers to differentiate between my different Travelers Notebook inserts.
Rather than write a whole bunch I’m just going to post the process photos and let them do the talking.
Background washSome trees to push the background back. Defining the midgroundMoving to the foregroundFinished
It’s been really fun working with these three colors. They’ve allowed some wonderful vibrancy to the work. I’m not sure if I’ll continue further with the series or if I’ll move on to some other colors.
Yesterday was a fun and successful day. On my way home from work I knew I wanted to work in ink, that it would be a night scene, and had to be loose. No other preconceived ideas, just have fun.
After dinner, working out, and some chores I settled into the studio with my sketchbook and inks.
Dr Ph Martin Bombay inks are really wonderful and versatile. I use them for nib work and as a acrylic paint. I spray them with water for effects, I thin them for light washes, mix them, just amazingly useful.
For this piece I used the dropper on the bottle to transfer the ink to the paper, sprayed it with water to spread and thin it and then brushed it to cover the whole page. After that the fun began. I used paper towel to lift the still wet ink to make clouds, fog, and the circle for the moon. The moon seemed to dim so I added some white paint to it.
Next came the trees. Both rigger brush and nib were used. As I worked I decided that I wanted a couple birds in the branches so these trees had to have branches by the moon and then some in front of it to push it back.
At this point I thought since I had some birds, maybe I should add some bats flitting about. Then the animals and people worked their way in. At this point I wet a wadded up paper towel and added yellow and red hues to it to make it glow. I thought about splattering some titanium white and creating halos around them on it to add fireflies but thought it might make it too busy.
What do you think?
So after finishing it I showed it to my daughter and she asked if there was a creepy thin man hiding behind the tree. Then after posting it a friend asked if there was a little lost boy there. Each person that views our art brings their life experience to it and creates their own story in it if we let them. A painting is a open door into the worlds we create. A snapshot in time and they bring themselves to it. I really prefer to let the viewers write their own story in my art. I think it reaches more people that way.
I would be lying if I says I finished the challenge this year. As you can see from my previous posts I only made it through day 14.
Am I disappointed? Yes. I really wanted to complete it this year. However, life got busy as always so I will look at the positives of it instead of feeling dejected and beat myself up.
Things that went right
My hatching improved immensely. I’m more consistent with the line thickness, spacing, and direction. They aren’t all random. I’ve even done more curved hatching.
My composition is better. Everything wasn’t just thrown on the paper to get it done because it was late, and I was tired and I don’t wanna do that prompt Waaa!
Things that went wrong
Because I was more focused things took longer and I think I burned out. I did better, I think I did two more days than last year, but I burned out none the less.
Because I was focused on using hatching I didn’t use brush pens or do shading with washes. Actually, this was because the sketchbook I was using wasn’t a good choice for washes. I adapted but I wasn’t happy about it.
Lessons learned and take aways
My theme fell to the wayside pretty much before I started. I wanted to add animals and people to each piece. Next year I will not use the official prompt list. I’ll create something that aligns with my art goals. to avoid burn out or incorporate the prompts into one large piece.
I’ll ensure that I pick the correct paper for my style and if it isn’t working I won’t dig in and be stubborn “I paid good money for this durn it! I’ll make it work!”. I’ll set it aside until I find something to use it for.
So here is the piece I did on the 30th. My scanner doesn’t like picking out the details for some reason so I appologize for the phone camera image.
Forest Spirit
As you can see I’ve used hatching, stippling and brushwork and there are little background characters. I’m happy with it.
See you in the next post and enjoy your art, whatever it may be.
It feels like Inktober has been going on forever but we’ve only had seven days so far.
Build started out in my mind as something larger but I decided to go smaller with better details. So some wooden building blocks that a toddler would play with.
For day 6 I thought about bodybuilders and action heroes. You know husky. Many others did the dog breed Huskie so I didn’t want to do that, though it would fit in with my goal of including animals. As I was getting ready to start I thought about the old comic characters Sarge from Beetle Bailey, Garfield the cat, and Hagar the Horrible (who really wasn’t so horrible) and decided to go that route.
The piece isn’t perfect. The proportions are off a bit but I enjoyed drawing it (my first comic character) and I learned from it.
Day 7 was something I was looking forward too. I had in my mind a enchanted forest to go with the promopt “enchanted”. Alas, by the end of the day I was running out of time so it became a bit frenzied but I think I hit the points I wanted to. There is darkness and light. A bit of whimsy. What do you think?
