Day three of the William Cooper painting from the “Tapestry” series of books. I figure one more day of working on the values should do it. Then we can tempura fry it and eat it! Hooray! Right now I’m doing my best to study wolf fur and extrapolate how that is going to flow over the surface of the forms. I don’t usually leave the hardest part for last but sure the heck did this time. I’m fairly confident I will get it to work. Luckily charcoal is a forgiving medium.
So here is day two on the William Cooper painting value pass. Still working in more details. I hope to finish this value pass this week, provided I can keep stealing time away from work and clients and family. I had to piece some background imagery together to replace what I had in my comp. I wasn’t too happy with the atmosphere. I like what is happening here much better than my original concept (for the background forest anyway.) I think I’ll tempt fate and say it is looking good for making my deadline of the end of the month.
As promised, here is the first work in progress value pass at my William Cooper painting. This is a character from The Tapestry series of books by Henry H Neff. I hope to keep plugging away at this and posting my progress as I go. As you can see, due to the high level of detail I am hoping to achieve (as high as I can at 10” x 20”) I had to add in a series of extra grid lines to try and match my comp and not butcher the proportions or composition too much. I should have this one completed, to some degree, by the end of the month. Whether that is a detailed value pass or completed painting relies heavily on my freelance schedule, my day job work schedule, and the schedule of our newborn and 4 year old. I’m crossing my fingers I can scrape up enough time to finish. Wish me luck!
Another Panel for my Ruby June book. Here Ruby June has secured the horn but is being pursued by Coo-Thoo-Loo and his Deep Ones. Thank goodness for huge seaweed! I was going to post the finished version of the last one I posted (Ruby June being captured) but I had a little mishap with the spray fixative. It was an old can and the nozzle gunked up on me and spat little blobs all over the canvas. I’m sure I can save it, I just have to wait for the blobs to dry. Not good to scan a piece with sticky little blobs all over it. Scanners get upset with that.
Finally got this one finished. Here Ruby June is being man-handled by some of Coo-Thoo-Loo’s fish-faced deep ones. I had that little incident with the spray fixative “spitting” all over the canvas so had to post something else yesterday even though this one was completed. Note to self… need to test spray a bit before saturating the canvas. Still, I’m sure all will be fine once I get to the painting stage. I’m looking forward to getting these painted, hence the full court press, but it looks as if I might have to take a short break as one of my favorite YA authors, Henry H Neff, has issued a challenge (it was really more of a contest) to render the Agent Cooper character from his Tapestry books. I do love a challenge. I have a pretty good compositional idea and will need to put it together before the end of August. Not to worry, though, I’ll be posting progress as I work. Hopefully it won’t go horribly awry.
Another work in progress. Here is where Ruby June gets captured by the deep ones. I love them at this stage. You can still see some of the grid lines here and the flat value pass with my erased gesture. I love that flat middle value when I start to pull out the lights and just push some of the values a bit. But the work must continue or I’ll never get to the painting stage!
Look who has decided to join the crew. I had a pretty productive day, got this fellow painted and plugged away on another charcoal book panel. Hooray for setting unrealistic goals and sticking to them! I might go in and push on this guy just a little more but for the time being I think he is where he should be.
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.
Fixed up another one of my earlier panels. This one was basically okay, I just needed to push the values further and make sure everything had a good range and looked consistent.
In this panel, Ruby June and Charter Jack are setting off to recover the treasure before the Deep Ones can get it. Exciting! A sea voyage! By the way, Charter Jack is Ruby June’s uncle. I didn’t want you all to think I’m letting our girl set off to sea with just any old rummy. Guess I’ll have to cover that somewhere between panel 1-5.
This one is a panel I worked on a long time ago and needed to go back into. I’m glad I skipped using fixative on this one as Ruby June’s proportions and look needed some tweaking to get her in line with the other, newer panels. Also the values needed pushing. After some time, I was able, finally to get it where it needed to be. Hooray!
In this panel, Ruby June is preparing for her day at the beach when she spies a deep one, well, spying on her. I get the feeling adventure is about to ensue!
