Chameleon Carapace

Well, here we are: almost June. That leaves me a mere two and a half months to get in as much art as possible before it's back to teaching French again. I've kept myself pretty busy these past two weeks, between recovering from a cold, teaching trapeze and making art. I have refused to wallow in a post art conference depression! Here's what's cooking:

"Aozora" in progress

I did the following sketch at Spectrum, soothing my deflated self-esteem by drawing spirals, like I am prone to do. I decided to pursue the concept with a finished piece. The color pencil drawing was "color study"; I don't know how effective this will end up being since oils handle pretty differently than color pencils, but I did really enjoyed doing it!

"Aozora" sketch

"Aozora" final color pencil drawing

There are a fair number of things I think don't work so well, some composition problems, that I resolve to avoid in the oil painting. I used vine charcoal to lay out the drawing on the canvas (a really old one that I re-gessoed to cover a truly hideous early painting of mine), which turns out is loads easier than using a graphite pencil because it erases much easier from the surface. It does get messy...

...but it cleans up really well once you trace over with ink and wipe off the charcoal with a wet cloth (let the ink dry first)!

I was debating whether or not to use this canvas since it's so old, and I've been wanting to try illustration board. When I visited the art store, though, and had a look at this thing called illustration board, I realized it really is just super thick paper, which means that I would need a large drawing table (the kind that you can tilt up) for me to be able to fix it down and work properly. This I don't have, plus there's some debate as to how much you can truly seal the paper from the paint, even if you coat it with gesso first (which you have to do). Lastly, I realized that this old canvas was exactly twice the size of the paper I used for the color pencil drawing, which made redrawing on the canvas easier. Someday when I have a bigger studio, I'd like to get a projector to help me transfer drawings to paintings and a nice big drawing table!

Anyway, the next step for "Aozora" is some digital color comps using a photo of the canvas drawing.

Moving on, the following piece was a long-overdue portrait I had promised One & Only to do of our dog.