Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Once, twice, three times a bad picture

Welcome back, dear reader! So, as promised, today I'm going to post the first half of a WIP of another ACEO I've been working on of my dog trapped in a cat's body, Bill.

For this particular one I had a few tricky little things to work with, the main one being the fact that it was a crappy ref picture that I was using. I vow that one day I will actually learn how to use my camera properly...but it won't be today. To add to the mix of things not working my favour, he was backlit in the picture and the colours in his coat (in the ref pic) were very off. So, combine those three things together and you've got one heck of a bad picture, but it was a good angle and you can't go wrong with cats for subject matter. I'll spare you having to look at the ref picture I was using and instead we'll skip right to the artwork:


So here it is in all it's beginning ugliness. It's my beloved Prisma's on Mi-Teintes (some sandy colour...I think it was called "Fawn"...or maybe it was "Sand"...) I've basically just marked in the areas that need to be defined so I don't get lost along the way. Now Bill is a plain ol' Tabby so for the main portion of his body and face I use Bronze and for the yellow-ish patches on his nose and around his mouth I use Yellow Ochre. I've marked in his striping and tail tip with Warm Grey 90% and I've used Black for his eyes and whisker spots. Also, just for giggles I've put in some Dark Brown on his ears. Around the eyes and along the ear line I've used Cream.
For those that are interested I'm one of those people that works the whole piece as I go. I've tried working in sections but it just doesn't work for me because the end result comes up looking "broken" and in order for me to keep the entire piece consistent I need to work it all at once. You need to find what works best for your own style and working habits.


For the second part I've added in the lights around him and I've also marked in more of his stripes and added more base colours to his coat. Now, I'm not a big fan of doing gobs of layering but for this one I'm going to do a bit more than I usually do because of the excellent ref shot I'm working from. I've used Slate Grey in some areas to make them a bit cooler in tone and as I get closer to finishing it off I'll go over it with some other cooler colour to make it pop a bit more and get the effect I'm going for. I've used French Grey 50% for some of my mid-tones and I've mixed it in with some of the Bronze in certain areas like the spots where the stripes transition form light to dark (and vice versa).
I've left the area under his tail, face and part of his paw untouched because that's where there's going to be some shadowing between him and his bed.

So that's it for today and I'll have the rest of it on Friday providing I don't leave my camera in some random, mobile location again. Tomorrow it's gardening time!

2 comments:

Jennifer Rose said...

well for having a bad reference picture the ACEO is turning out really nice :)

Rita said...

Thanks Jennifer!
Actually, it's funny because a lot of the works I've done that I've been pleased with have been done from poor photos. Hopefully this one won't be an exception! ;D