Round 2

The city can be a jungle. Infact, if you look at the poster on the right carefully, you'll see that the zoo is missing an escaped lion.

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For starters, here's the finished piece next to the drawing. I don't draw on white paper. Hurts my eyes ..or whatever. I draw on magic paper. It's a kind of special ordered printmaking paper that, if the company ever quits making, more than likely I'll hang up my hat.


I'll warm the drawing over with a nice layer of soft light.


Then, after coloring the face, I'll go over with some more soft light and work with the lines til I get something I think will work.


Coloring the clothes and hat. Here's a weird thing I do that when people around here ask and I try and explain it just doesn't work. I color a layer of multiply and then copy that layer. I'll take the copy and change the layer setting to soft light and then Hue/Saturation change it to a little darker and (usually) a little redder. At that point most people slowly say, "Ok. ...Why?" To me, it colors the shape and the line and I think it looks better, and warmer (or cooler in some cases) and all around good.


Shirt shirt... see SEE? Color the shirt blue. Copy the layer, turn it to soft light and make it a little redder (you get purple) and then the lines change color and it looks richer. I'm not nuts.


Brick work color, involves the same principles.


Here's the ticket. Screen. Screen is magic. Use a dark color though, it goes atomic pretty fast otherwise. While you were looking away I added a lot of shadows. Don't panic. And some more screen.


More screen...


Ok, in this one not much is changed but look at the shadows at the sections of the sidewalk. Helps to sell that there's light coming from the left.


Lighten up a few areas with more screen...


Bricks...


By now I've added some more shadow and a blue light on the back of the boy.


Here's a trick. At this point I'm thinking the face lines have got too washed out so I just copy them over from the orginal drawing to strengthen them up some.


And there you go.



My Thoughts: I like this one. It wasn't super complicated and I think I did it around an hour and half to two hours, painting time. I like the light and the feel. I don't think it's as bold as it could be, or maybe it needed to be a better pose or drawing, I don't know, I just like the light. It feels smoky to me and that's what I was after so, chalk this one up as OK.