Thursday, March 27, 2008

Orchids on Stonehenge WIP

It is looking better now...please note that the background colour isn't as dark as it appears in the photo. Also, the finished composition will be different as I will be cropping it when it is matted.

As I mentioned in the last post, when I began working on the flowers I started with the areas with the darkest values. Here you can see that I worked those areas quite a bit. Satisfied that I had established my darkest values, I started to work on the upper right and left petals. I worked on the upper right one first and then the left one. I work on areas like this separately because I don't want to miss the uniqueness of the different petals. For example, if I applied a base layer all over the right one and then did the same thing on the left and then repeated this with each colour, there would be the possibility that I would miss subtle differences in shading and colour between the two petals.

I am working from the top of the flowers down. If I had done the lower petals first, my hand would be positioned over the finished petals while I worked on the upper ones. I don't typically work with a hand guard. While coloured pencil pigment doesn't usually smear (oil based pencils are more prone to this or if you have a lot of dark pigment applied it will), I prefer not to have my hand resting on a finished part of the paper. While the upper blossoms are not finished, I have the majority of the base colours down.

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