Monday, June 18, 2007

Is...is it over?

"Show Stopper" ACEO can be bid on here.
Copyright Rita Woodburne

Thanks for coming back, dear reader!
So the Open Studio over the week-end, in all honesty, wasn’t as busy as I had hoped, but it wasn’t a complete loss. After talking with the other artists I had showing with me we decided that this time of year really wasn’t the best, what with people going to cottages, horse shows and wanting to do outdoor things in general that perhaps viewing art isn’t the first thing on their mind. Live and learn, right?
On the plus side we got to “talk art” when it wasn’t busy and we also got some art done. It was a good learning experience and I did get to meet some new people and get to chit chat and brainstorm ideas. My feeling is that as long as you end the day having learned something new then it was a day worth living. Also, because I had my studio sign adorned with balloons there were lots of people that actually saw the sign as opposed to just zipping by in their vehicle. Good stuff!

So since I don;t have stories of acquiring massive wealth from selling my work I decided that I’d like to post a WIP of an 8x10 I’m doing of a wolf. I got this picture from the reference library over at WetCanvas. Before printing out my reference photo I did a little tweaking in PhotoShop because the values in the original picture were pretty flat and I wanted to ramp up some of the colours a bit. Usually when I print out a photo (I don’t like working directly from the computer screen, too hard on my eyes) I wind up scribbling on it and making little notes about things I want to tweak along the way because 1- I have a bad memory and 2- I don’t like adhering to the reference picture completely.
With my apologies, I forgot to take a picture of my line drawing and instead will have to skip to the drawing with some darks and lights already added.



I’ve also included some close up shots of the eye and mouth area. At this point I’ve only used Black, White, Cool Grey 10% and Black Cherry. On the tongue I’ve used Blush Pink, Nectar and both White and Cool Grey 10% for the highlights. In the eye I used Jasmine for the iris but as I get more done on the wolf’s body and/ or the background I’ll most likely add in a few bits and bobs of other colours.



I can already see a few things that I’m going to have some issues with, like the large area of his shoulder that’s exposed, and the area around his neck. In the original picture he’s wearing a collar (he’s a sanctuary wolf) and I’d like to take that out which means I’ll have to improvise my shading so it doesn’t look like a wolf head blobbed onto a wolf body. That would be bad.
I also suspect that I may do an ACEO of this one because, quite frankly, I’d like to work something like the "blobbing" issue out before actually committing it to the larger piece. I can justify scrapping a smaller piece for the sake of saving a larger piece and preventing giving myself a massive headache.

I don’t anticipate this piece being done in a week so you can expect this one to drag out over a few weeks. It’s show season and I committed to another event that is on Canada Day so I suspect anything that I start now won't be completed in a speedy fashion. So, that's where this one is right now. I'm hoping to do more on it tomorrow but there's an event that I'll have my art in this week-end for a local animal rescue so I'd also like to get myself sorted out for that. Ah, the hectic life of an artist!

2 comments:

Lisa B. said...

The open studio sounds like it was fun. Any opportunity to spend the day with other artists is time well spent! Visitors are a bonus.

The balloons were a good idea. Passers-by will remember them and stop to see what's going on the next time.

I'd like to have an open studio someday- when it's not in the massively cluttered basement of our house.

Rita said...

I have to admit that despite throngs of people showing up that I did have a good time, and I always like "talking art" with other artists.

I would think holding an Open Studio in a massively cluttered basement would make it memorable! ;D