The puppy and the cardinal

After almost two months of hiatus, I am back! What happened? I had a baby! I am finally getting my act together and finding time for myself again (every once in a while... ;)).
So, the other day I finished this small drawing of the young lady with a puppy and a cardinal that I started at the end of January, right before I gave birth. Somehow I also managed to take WIP pictures for this one...Hope you'll like it.

 You probably remember this line-art...Right before entering the hospital, I started coloring the dress but after a couple of layers I had to take a long break, as more important matters became priorities...;)

 As always I started with the face. I was trying to give it a lot of light, like in the 18th century paintings that inspired me in coloring this. Later I figured out it was too flat this way and I decided to add deeper shadows.

For the dress, I wanted a happy blue color, so I started with B01, I think, and then added a bright B24 and B28 for shadows/depth. I also a combination of violets for the ribbons.
Immediately, I disliked the effect: too bright...my old bad habit, which I have tried hard to avoid for a while now. I wanted happy blue, not headache electric blue!

Well, at this point I stopped drawing for a while, but I was still bugged by the bad turn this little piece was taking. I had planned to hang it in my baby's bedroom and was sorry I could not make it nice for her...

After a month from my little one's birth, I picked it up again and started tinkering with it to see if I could fix it.
A generous addition of grey (a combination of C2, C4, and C6) started improving (in my eyes at least).
As you can see, to prevent a super-saturated red effect on the cardinal, I started putting down my shadows in grey on it too (I learned my lesson...;)).

Here I kept going deep with blue-ish and grey shadows for the face and the hair (I was having fun again!).

Here the hair is completed, and so is the cardinal. I was not sure what color the hair should be. I wanted this young lady to have my daughter's colors. Would be nice to have guessed right. Mommy has brown hair, dad blond and the eyes colors in our families range from black to grey, green, blue, golden hazelnut, and chestnut brown...so baby could be almost anything...I decided for blond with grey eyes. We will see if I was right in a few months (right now she is light brown with grey eyes, but she will most likely change).

More depth was also added to the face with more greyish and lavender blues.

Now to the background and frame. I had fun with light tones of beige and light greens and blues.
You probably can't tell from the picture, but there are a gazilion layers there, as I experimented with different markers: a little more green, no too much...a little more beige..better, hmm, what about some blue here? etc...I would not be able to tell you exactly what I did here!

Getting close to the end, I used my Caran D'Ache watercolor pencils to refine things here and there.

And this is how it looks now!

Coming soon, the three faces I tested the Prismacolor marker's skin tones colored with copic markers...

September Harvest Final Version

And here is the final result of my efforts.

PS: Friends and family asked me if this is a self-portrait....not really! The spirit of September and I have one thing in common: long brown hair (her is longer though ;)), but that's all. ;)

An intentional self-portrait is this one instead.

September Harvest step by step

Because of my super cold, I have been home these two days, so I have had time to draw a bit more consistently than usual (except for the interruptions dedicated to vapors inhalations).
So, incredible but true, I was able to finish September harvest yesterday afternoon!

Along the way I took a few WIP pictures to document the process.

The first step was to color the leafy border. The upper portion is made of fig leaves...I was so crazy that I drew the little veins for each of them...almost lost my eyesight there.Unbelievable! I have to learn what is essential and what's not!
The sides are decorated with grapevine leaves. This time, I wised up (and was also tired), so I just quickly traced the veins after coloring the main surface of the leaves. ;)

I picked these two plants, not only because they give us their fruits in September, but also because they surround my parents house. In particular there are two huge fig trees above and around the ancient drinking trough that you see behind the girl. We call it a Fountain, but it's original functions were much humbler than the name suggests. Yet, the water constantly flowing from the pipe is potable and absolutely delicious! Nobody ever buys bottled water in that village! ;)

 This is what I did on Sunday afternoon. I spent hours rendering the Fountain. That was fun. Then I colored the few elements of the village I artificially pasted behind the Fountain, which in reality is built against a hill. ;)
In the evening, while watching Carnival on Netflix (that show is so creepy that I have to do something else to release tension ;)), I colored the backdrop of the Valley. That's the view from my grandma's house, by the way.
At some point, I got distracted, chose the wrong marker and colored too brightly some of those hills. I then started to worry about loosing all the efforts I poured into the leaves that were melting with the other colors around them...



Meanwhile I started asking myself what colors I should use for the writing ans the sheet on which the girl sits (by the way, the first layer of the girl's skin really stinks at this point!).



Moving to yesterday morning, now. The girl's skin is blended a bit more decently, but there is a new concern: because of the shades, she is the same color of the Fountain!
"Nooo! Have to do something about that!"

While thinking about fixing the issue, I decided to color her hair. She is a dark haired lady, which should provide some contrast...;)

Below you can see how the picture looked when I finished coloring the hair. I also decided to color the word September with fall-like colors, which I think works well with the fruit and the soft reds of the tiles.

I was still bugged by the fact the skin tones and background issues, though.

So I tried to fix things with pencils and my brand new Derwent Pastel pencils. I used a uniform coat of white on the background to tone down the greens of the Valley. I did some moderate highlights on the village. Then I used blue, dark green and black on the fountain walls to deepen the shadows and light green to highlight the grapevine leaves. That really made a difference in my eyes. :)




Finally I used, browns and soft reds for the girl's skin. At the end of this step, she looked much more alive and much less stony...

Meanwhile, I came to a decision on the color for the sheet: bluish subdued light purple...do you like it?

Ok, probably you cannot see much right now...however I took a much better picture this morning and I'll show it to you in the next post...this one is already extremely long!

Thank you for taking the time to read this diary. Hopefully it was not too boring...;)

In Arwen's shoes completed.

I finished my Lord of the Rings-inspired piece, "In Arwen's shoes". This is the progression from inking to the final piece (if you want you can also see the initial drawing in pencil from a previous post):

Inking: the easy part

Defining a palette

Sticking to the palette: the hard part for me...

The finished piece: copic markers with touch ups in pencils and white gel pen. Enjoy!