Saturday, October 6, 2012

Gone Fishin' Part 3

I like using acrylic wash because it has the look of watercolor but it doesn't reactivate when it gets wet. This way I can do all my values and modeling first in a way that can't get messed up, then I apply the brighter but much more delicate concentrated watercolor as the final step to add all the chroma.

As you can see below I start adding the concentrated watercolor to her skin, then bathing suit next. I do the light colors first because if I did it the other way around there's the danger of the dark color bleeding into the lighter. At this stage I don't attempt any modeling, I only lay in the concentrated watercolor as flat tones. Modeling will only mess it up. The Lumas are completely translucent so the acrylic washes underneath show through perfectly. Next I move on to the orange of her hair and the blues for the fish and the ocean and sky.

I always paint a test subject simultaneously. I try my colors on the test first and if it looks a little off I can fix it for the real piece.

And here's a scan of the final art.

5 comments:

Liam Lee said...

What a wonderful journey and insight in how you work! Thankyou for sharing and inspiring.

Mick said...

excellent. Thanks for the break down too

chromasketch said...

sweet... both the final and your test image look fantastic.

Unknown said...

Loved all the sketches. Really admire your style!

J Scribbles said...

Love the pic in the middle!