Wednesday, May 28, 2008

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!

6 comments:

Susan Carlin said...

Good luck with the braces tomorrow. I've been enjoying your posts!

Anonymous said...

I just love how you start out with these vibrant splashy colors! It looks like another beautiful painting is well on it's way to materializing. :)

Best wishes for your dental visit...been through the braces thing myself. Hang in there. :)

Best,

Rebecca

Unknown said...

Susan, thank you so much for taking the time to comment! You are a wonderful painter and I will be visiting your blog often.

Hi Rebecca, thank you for your feedback on my painting. It's looking pretty ugly tonight, the vibrant colors are not being beaten into submission by the cp's. I'm thinking I might have to take the pastels to it tomorrow.

Thanks for the encouragement about the braces. I'm sure it will be fine, but at my age I don't usually look for ways to torture myself....but I want straight teeth, doggone it! :-)

Teresa Mallen said...

Hi Cindy, another facinating project. I enjoy watching your underpaintings develop.

Two questions: If they don't make a yellow marker, did you use another brand for the yellow we see on the pepper (at least it looks pretty yellow on my monitor)?
Also, you mentioned that you are using white Pastelbord. Is there a specific reason (i.e. do the markers not show up as well on the coloured Pastelbord)?

I join the others in wishing you all the best with yout braces experience!

Unknown said...

Hi Teresa, very good question! I used my yellow Inktense pencil to create the yellow underpainting.

I'm thinking that I might have to finish this in soft pastels. The problem I discovered when working on it (I actually had the same problem on the last piece...I guess I just forgot) is that the change in values on the pepper are too hard edged. I should have used all orange or all yellow so as not to create the hard edge.

Ah....we live and learn. I'll post more on it in the next few days.

Unknown said...

I just realized you had another question Teresa...

I've used the tan pastelbord by Ampersand with markers and the results were to my liking. I just wanted to see what happened with the white....the colors are definitely richer on the white board.