Still working on the background

This is how it looks now, the peach color has turned out to be more like a coral, but it's ok. Right now I'm working on reapplying a second layer of that coral because the first was so thin that soon got pretty overpowered by the green and yellow, it's taking me longer waiting for one color to dry before putting the other down instead of doing the whole base coat in one single layer as I did in the previous cards but, I don't want muted greyed colors so it's safer to apply the coral and the green in different layers.

Since there's not much to see yet I've included the swatch of colors I did to decide which ones I would use in this illustration, the Olive Green from Winsor&Newton is so different from the Daniel Smith one that it's scary lol.

And this is a shot of the previous step, before the second layer of coral, it was really light, but not anymore, I want BOLD in this series of illustrations for the cards, boldBOLDBOLD!



Links to the whole WIP: Step 1 (rough), Step 2, Step 3, Step 4, Step 5, Step 6.

Yupo, I'll try it in the future for sure

I've been trying to design some visit cards today, thought it would be easier but now it looks like I'm not satisfied with anything.



Then I've looked at my palette and have seen some dry used colors mingled together, that has put an idea in my mind, why not look for some patterns of paints flowing into each other? so instead of cleaning my palette I've taken a sample of yupo I had around and thrown Lamp Black and French Ultramarine Blue all around hoping to get some patterns I can use in the visit cards.


Lesson learned: Yupo is an interesting animal... worths giving it a try.

Santa Claus is coming to town (as a greeting card)

Good morning everybody! Ok, the fourth card is finished before the second LOL, this is Santa coming to town during Christmas night, get the cookies and milk ready guys!


So far the first 3 are already up at my prints shop in Deviant Art if you want some, from tomorrow on they'll be offering a 30% discount! Don't miss it :)

I'll upload a banner later on the side of the blog so everybody have it handy during the whole season.


An since I haven't put up the progress of this one so far, here are some shots I took while painting:



Link to the previous step.

Deconstructing Daniel Smith's Moonglow

I'm in the middle of a quest to solve a pigment problem in my fourth christmas card. The choice I made yesterday doesn't seem like the best one, it was Daniel Smith's Moonglw, beautiful, BEAUTIFUL color, but not the right pigments for this card in particular.

Then today after some tests a bulb has lighted over my head, why not check all the pigments in Moonglow, see if I have them and replace the problematic one? so of course it's taken me 2 seconds to realize I didn't have all the pigments in Moonglow lol, but that's ok because it has let me go on research mode, handprint.com is fabulous for that.

So for Moonglow I need:
- Viridian (PG18) which I have (in fact it will give me the chance to try my untouched Yasutomo paints).
- Ultramarine Blue (PB29) which is the granulating color in the mix and the one I wanted to change for Indanthrene Blue since I've already used in the sky and is rich and staining.
- Anthraquinoid Red (PR177) which I don't have and after looking at the pigment it's not under another name at Winsor&Newton, so I won't be able to buy it locally, on the other hand after reading about its qualities I don't like the fact that it hasn't good lightfastness, one of the alternatives given at Handprint is Perylene Maroon which I happen to love and after reading more about the pigment it's staining, so it'll be good for darks and my mix wont granulate.


I feel so accomplished right now! LOL, so I guess I'll put here the info I wrote about both pigments, it's easier to take a photo than to rewrite it, sorry if my handwritting is a problem (one day I'll have to take all those scraps of paper I have around with info and put them together in a notebook or something).


Now after all the theory is time for making some tests and see if it does really work for my painting or I'll need to keep on looking for solutions, let the fun begin!

War of Opaques progress

Do you know when you are in the middle of a wash and the doorbell rings and you think "damn!"? Well, DAMN!!! and right after that The Hideous Turquoise Background of Doom happened, O_o



Somehow after the swatch I thought that it wouldn't harm to use turquoise in the background, it hasn't worked as planned, hmmm... will have to think how to fix that area.





Other than that I'm having lots of fun using opaques and mingling them with transparents, so far in this first painting it's going to be cad orange, naples yellow, something turquoise light, manganese blue nova and lamp black as my opaques, I'm loving them so far, you can get nice texture, the paint flows nicely and it's easy to control, no more fear to use strokes with LOTS of pigment, surprisingly they don't overpower other colors while mixing on the paper nor they get overpowered by others, they cover anything nicely and it's easy to build up volume with lights/darks = nice!, they make the transparent next to them glow, they dry darker than I expected though but that's not necesarily a bad thing IMO.

So far I've only find 2 cons on the colors I'm using:
1.- I use to layer yellow over the oranges I have to make them glow and it's a thing that doesn't work over opaque cad orange, it was easy to imagine but I had to try anyway (always wishful thinking)
1.- The turquoise, pretty color, nasty pigment to lift, grrrrrrr.... and I've been spraying water over my pics for years getting pretty textures but it hasn't worked AT ALL with that turquoise, my fault or the pigment's? I don't know yet.

Links to the whole WIP: step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4

Is there something as too many colors?

This past sunday I've been making a chart of the colors I have to check which ones were opaques, we will be studying those at an online group and since I never do this kind of thing I thought it would be good to have a chart instead of relying in my memory so....

I've found that some of the colors I have look to me absolutely opaques but they are listed as transparent in the official color charts, so I must have done something wrong? lol

What is undeniable is that I do have more tubes than I need for sure, I used every single one at one point but in the end my urge to try new colors does leave me with a lot of small tubes that I don't really use at all.



My opaques run mostly among the blue/green/yellow range and a few that I don't often use, the examples of Carla O'Connor's paintings at the group made me want to go for figures in this project and inspired by Roger Cruz my gigglyinner12yearsold side wants to make some muppet show so super grover, cookie monster, Ernie & Bert, count von count... beware!

Easter's gone but unfinished painting remains

I didn't work too much on it yesterday after all, just a couple of layers, trying to add some texture to the skin from the beginning. The blueish blade that goes right to the upper right corner is bothering me a lot, I can't even remember when that became so obvious and I need to tone it down as soon as I start reworking the background, since I didn't want to darken that area too much I think I'll try to lift it and see what happens



the fact is that I spent a lot of time at the painting table yesterday but I wasted it doing swatches of a couple of colors that looked the same, W&N Rose Madder Alizarin and DS Quinacridone Burn Scarlet, so I thought the smart thing to do was to test both and see if the texture was different, if one mixed different from the other or if the color changed at different saturations of pigment... and nothing, both looked the same, then I checked the brands color charts and they happen to be the exact same pigment so what a waste of time! that'll show me to look for the charts BEFORE starting these tests next time.



I thought Rose Madder Alizarin had been removed from WN charts, in fact the one listed there is Rose Madder, maybe they reworked the formula and changed the name? The same goes for Vandyke Brown, I have the remains of a small tube that I got as a freebie from the art shopper years ago, he was giving them away because apparently WN was stopping the production, but now it is there in WN color chart as a superpermanent color so...

Anyway, I wasted some time and learned my lesson, maybe I manage to work on it a bit more before the weekend.

Links to the whole WIP: step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4, step 5, step 6