Lotus...in progress

The Lotus of Creation is giving me joy and grief...part of it are coming our just as I wanted, part are driving me insane. Here is a mini swatch with tentative color schemes. I chose the fist, which was also the one I elaborated on more. You can see which Copic markers I chose for the composition.

All appeared perfectly simple when working on an 1x1" surface. The trouble came when I started working on the real drawing. I want to give the goddess figure in the middle a rich chocolate skin...after all the Indian myths and legends surrounding creation are the inspiration for this piece. However, my experience with deeply dark skin tones is practically non existent...bottom line, after putting down the greys (W3 and W5), when I began layering E39, I realized I was flattening all the face features and the 3-dimensionality of the body. So I frantically tried to repair the mistake using light tones (E02 and ultimately R000) to take away the excessive color. Then I grew discouraged and started to work on the flower, which I loved. Later, I went back and retouched some more the skin. This is what the drawing looks like at the moment

...well, I'll have to work more on this, I am afraid, probably with pencils, given that the paper has about taken as much ink as it possibly could. Things look much better now, though (believe me!...it's probably difficult to make out details, since I took the picture at dusk...).

There is still the upside down goddess, to deal with though...and I am not sure what to do, because ideally she is identical to the first one, but I am trying to avoid the mistakes I made there so....we'll see. :)

The virdict

In the previous two posts I took a measure of what I could achieve with the colors in my Prismacolor markers palette. I have had these markers in my cabinet for a while, but I never dared to use them on a full scale before, because I had too little experience with them and I was afraid of ruining my drawings. I knew the earth and grey tones work very well to establish backgrounds and to create a base that  keeps brighter colors from becoming overwhelming, in other words, to give unity to the drawing. 

However I had to plan ahead, for my own peace of mind, before making more ambitious attempts.

My impression at the end of this experiment is that Prismacolors are most definitely not equivalent to Copic markers. The colors that I would have instinctively picked for skin gave at first very scary results. Both Pale Peach and Eggshell (not to mention Light Peach) are way to orange-y and bright for my taste. In general all neutral combinations resulted too dark for my tastes. I usually like to start really light (with Copic R000, to give you an example), build progressively the skin-tones and shade/shadows, and have full control on how deep or intense they become. Here, after laying down the first "lighter"color I found myself regretting the choice and looking anxiously for a way of smoothing things down. 

Maybe I should have made bigger use of the colorless blender. I could have started laying color at the borders of the face and then I could have diluted the excessive brightness by blending it away toward the center of the face. I did not think to do this, because with Copics the blender is something I mostly ignore and pick up only to correct accidental smudges here and there. With Copics I always blend with other colors.

With Prismacolors blending is much more difficult and the effect is always to intensify whatever color you began with. I am sure part of the issue has to do with my choice of paper. I used Fabriano Artistico Watercolor paper, which usually works marvels with Copics. Looks like Prismacolors soak the paper too quickly and also that they dry much quicker than Copic, leaving a very tiny window for attempting to blend. I would like to see how they behave with Strathmore Bristol paper, which I have used in the past with alternate fortune.

Bottom line, while using this Fabriano Artistico (of which I have purchased several pads) I will happily used Prismacolors in some special occasions and like before for big areas (they go down really evenly and this is a great plus), but for delicate details like faces I will rely mainly on Copics.

What were your experiences comparing Copics and Prismacolors?

Skin Tones in Prismacolor Part 2: Cold hues

...And this is the second set of floating faces, with  more strange and unearthly colorings. I like some of these very much. Others came out a bit too over the top for my taste, but there might be occasion when these combinations could work.

Which ones are your favorites among these ones?
Mine are C1, C2, and D2. :)

Skin tones in Prismacolor Part 1: Neutrals

Here is the first part of my experiments with my new Prismacolors. I selected two groups of colors that could be suitable for skin tones, neutrals-warms and colds. I began with combining the warm colors and I have obtained 6 possible outcomes, that you can see below:

Which ones are your favorites?
Mine are A3 and B1. :)

Next, the 6 combination of cool colors.