New Work in Progress- Yellow Pepper Top

I've not done alot of artwork the last week or so. I'm getting ready to have my "appliances", in other words "braces" put on tomorrow. So it's been to the dentist for cleaning, perio charts, flouride, x-rays, to the orthodontist for fiberglass molds and separators. I had the separators put in last Friday......on Saturday and Sunday I was questioning the wisdom of having this whole thing done. My mouth felt like someone had jammed hot forks in my back teeth. But finally yesterday I realized I might possibly live through this. ;-)

This piece will be another experiment with using markers as an underpainting for colored pencil.

The first experiment I tried was with Staedtler markers, but I saw these in the Dick Blick catalog....they are archival and lightfast. They are also super fast-drying compared to the Staedtler's which took about 24 hours to dry. The Prismacolor markers take about an hour to fully dry.

My only disappointment is that there is no yellow marker??? They come in a fine point or chisel point. I ordered the chisel point and was able to apply them easily to the white Ampersand Pastelbord that I am using (5" x 7").

New Markers..........




Here is the underpainting complete, using purple for the background. I was very happy the markers don't leave any stroke marks, but I was taken aback at how brilliant the colors are. I'm hoping that I can get enough coverage with the colored pencils (I will be using my Coloursoft's by Derwent).



Underpainting finished..........

I was pretty pleased that the purple of the background toned down nicely with an application of Dark Green, Deep Red, Indigo and Black. The only thing that I noticed was a bit of flaking with the first layer. The cp's tended to flick off some of the marker color. Easily fixable, but a little annoying.

Background finished.....now on to the pepper!