I’m making slow and steady progress.  Couldn’t resist starting to push in a little detail and now that I am looking at it small, on my computer screen, I see there will be a fair amount of shadow work that needs to be pushed further due to the captain’s large head.  No biggie.  I’m up to the task.  I think I’m going to get my other characters a little more fleshed in.  I’m still not really feeling the cat and may have to amend the face to look more like the smaller cat painting I did earlier.  I mean, I can have two different cat crew members.  The other one is the cook, after all.  We’ll have to see.

I’ve been so wrapped up in the progress of this latest painting that I have neglected to post in a bit.  I started a larger painting, 30″ x 40″ showcasing a few animals together in one scene.  This image depicts our captain and a few of his mates collecting a prize ship.  The mock-up took a while and there are still areas in the comp that I’m going to have to work through on the fly, matching lighting, refining detail, and the like.  Regardless, I finished blocking in most of the image and am now pushing in a little more value range and refinement in the details.  There is a long way to go and I grit my teeth whenever I look at it now but then, as my colleague Johannah said to me, “It looks bad until it doesn’t.”  I’m going to try to remember that wisdom and plow ahead.  I will try to be a little more regular with my progress here.

Another charcoal done and added to the list awaiting painting.  On this jackrabbit I not only punched up the lights with a white colored pencil but I also tried pushing in with a black colored pencil to heighten the contrast in a few spots and add in a little post charcoal and fixing detail.  The colored pencils are working great but I have found that you have to have a decently waxy colored pencil to apply this technique.  I tried using a colerase pencil but it didn’t build up on the surface all that well.  I imagine the same would be true with watercolor pencils though I have not tried them yet.  The traditional colored pencils work well though.  I might find myself employing a full range of grays in the future but for now the white and black are working well.

SQUIRREL!  So here is my latest charcoal value pass animal painting.  Still making good progress moving forward on these.  This one was quite challenging as it measures 5″ x 7″ and getting the right amount of detail in there was a little difficult.  There are still a few places that I think I will have to push further when it comes to the painting stage but as far as the charcoals values go I think this is a solid place to be.  According to my records, the tally of my animal painting is 11 fully painted, 4 completed charcoals, leaving 11 more charcoals to complete to get enough for my alphabet book.  If I can get them done quick enough, I may be able to meet my deadline to have a show in August.  I didn’t think it was possible but I have a little vacation time saved up and I’m maintaining a pretty good clip.  Lets hope I can keep it up!

I was lucky enough to have some time this weekend to complete the charcoals of my owl.  This one took a little longer than anticipated since I worked a little larger than usual at 11″ x 14″.  I didn’t notice until I was well into it but the frame on this animal is a little skewed so getting it framed is probably going to be a little problematic.  Lucky I work with gallery wrap canvas so I can still display it when I do my show with little issue.  For those of you not in the know, gallery wrap is a deeper canvas that tends to look a little better when displayed without a frame than the shallow canvases.

The white colored pencil proved to be very useful for this one.  Before I got to that stage of fixing the canvas, I found myself turning to the large rubber block eraser that I have had little use for since school.  Getting that long, thin, sharp edge was very effective on those long light feathers around the eyes and in the brows.  I’m definitely going to remember that use!  When it comes to the painting, I’m thinking I might do a very faint pattern on the shirt.  It feels like it needs a little something more down there.

Here is the latest progress in the owl animal painting.  The different feather textures are starting to come together.  I still have to formulate a new design for the dress as the current design is very busy and I don’t think I want that to detract from the complexity of the feathers.  Too much detail everywhere and I won’t be able to direct the viewers eye effectively.  Again, working in the charcoal with my finger which a lot of artists tell you not to do but I feel like if it works, who is to say to not do it.  We all have to find what works for us personally and that works for me.

Hooray!  I’m remembering to post my work in progress!  I often forget until I’m about through with a stage and then realize that it might be interesting or helpful to see the work in various stages of completion.  Here is a few hours plugging away at blocking in.  This one proves to be a challenge with all the different patterning and textures in the feathers.  My colleague, Johannah O’Donnell, mentioned to me that birds are like that before I started.  I made sure to tell her that she was right on the money with that comment and promised to let her in on any secrets that make the work go faster.  We’ll see if I come up with anything.  Might not do her any good anyway as our processes are pretty different.  In any case, here is the owl in progress.  I managed to find a nice bar maid image to use as reference.  Hopefully it will turn out.  At this stage I’m always a little unsure.

So maybe you can tell I did one of the things I swore I would never do… make a New Year resolution.  So I’m going to be pushing hard to be better at posting to my blog with new art this year.

Here is a small pig for my animal collection, only about 9″ x 6″, at the charcoal value stage.  I tried something a little different on this one, pushing in with white colored pencil in a few places before spray fixing.  Probably won’t do that again as the charcoal darkens a lot with the spray fix and the white colored pencil remains stark so there ends up being a gap between the lightest of the charcoal values and the white.  No biggie.  I could push after the spray fix dries to build back in that light range.  I think I’ll just save the colored pencil until after the spray fix in the future.

I don’t have a backstory in mind for this fellow yet but I’m sure he will work into the novella at some point.  For a name I’m considering Piercival Pigglesbottom.  With a name like that how could something not occur to me?

On reviewing my work goals at the end of last year, it turns out I set myself to complete my animal series by August.  Yikes!  It is do-able though I still do have a good number of animals to complete.  I decided to do another one a little larger so this proper nightingale is going to be 11″ x 14″.  As in keeping with my technique, I’m working charcoal on gessoed canvas, sealing it with spray fixative and then coming back in with white colored pencil to push a few places a little lighter and add in a bit more detail.  Since I’m in the groove, I’m considering completing the final animal digital mock-ups and charcoals all at once and then trying to get them painted at the same time.  We’ll see how that goes.  Hopefully it will speed up the work flow a bit and I can still have some time to write.

It really feels good to be back to painting.  There was a time in the middle of this where I had pushed this guy to about 80% and was slogging my way through the background environment wondering why in the heck I decided to do bricks that I was having to really push.  Once the background came together and I got to push the color saturation on him, I was really back to enjoying it.  This one proved to be challenging with all the little details of the patterning on the jacket and the lace work on the cravat and, of course the brick but I liked pushing those little details that I hadn’t pushed in my other animals.  Anyway, I look forward to adding him to my wall of animals and who knows, sometime soon maybe I’ll finish the series and have a show and maybe get that alphabet book done.