Another animal charcoal value pass done. Not sure what the story is with this guy but he seems pretty pleased, whatever it is. Hopefully there will be some painting happening tomorrow to finish this hippo. Can’t wait to add in a little more detail here. The wall of animals is slowly coming together.
Finished painting the cat. My daughter should be sooo happy now. She might even wait 3 minutes before telling me the next one to work on. So I added some food stains to the shirt, after all, he is the ship’s cook. Even if he were dressing up for the portrait, I imagine he would be a little limited with respect to clean clothes.
Here are the charcoals for the next animal in that series. This cat is going to be the ship’s cook so I wanted a little less formality to the clothing. I’ll probably stain it up with some food as well. Played around with some color studies today so depending on my workload, I may get to painting it tonight. I think this one makes 8, so only 18 more to go and the book is done! Hooray! (I’m also plugging away on another Ruby June book page so there is that as well to interfere with my animal painting productivity.)
My daughter was not pleased that I had started mocking up a comp of a vulture before working on the cat. Her response to finding out I was finally working on her cat was, “Now start on a dog.” Ah, to be 4 years old.
This was the first small scale animal painting I worked on. Originally it was just for my daughter to take the place on her wall of the huge piece, “Princess Burlap Sack,” that intimidated her. Since then I’ve done a few other animals and it has evolved into an ABC book. As I get closer, and complete more of the paintings, I’ll continue to post them and keep everyone tuned into the progress of the book!
Lots of irons in the fire, as you can tell by what I am posting here.
This is a video of my charcoal process in the creation of the rooster painting. I show how I grid off from my original reference, tone my canvas, sketch in with my eraser, pull out highlights, and then darken my shadows. All of this happens before I fix the canvas, gel, and then apply acrylic washes and drybrush.