Ammonite background

If you recall, last post I said I wanted to work on the background for the ammonites.  What I wanted to do was a gradation from light areas to dark areas, highlighting the lighter areas with dark ones, etc.  I had a fair bit of difficulty achieving that!  Turns out that fixative adds quite a bit of texture to the paper.  Didn't seem to matter what I used to smudge the charcoal, all I got were small bits of the smudging tool on the paper and a lot of "lift" of the charcoal!

I decided to use my kneaded eraser and get rid of the whole background, when I noticed a cool pattern emerging.  I continued with the eraser around the page and tried to keep the pattern going.  Then I went over the darker areas with a bit of charcoal to bring them out a bit more and see what it looked like.  The above image is what's happening so far.  I haven't fully decided if I like it just yet.  I think I will work with it some more.  I haven't done anything permanent yet, so the good news is that if I ultimately don't like it I can still take it back!

AMMONITES!!

I think the ammonites are coming along very nicely!  I applied more fixative after last time and spent my time today sticking with the details.  I applied more black to the darkest areas and added some white to give some high-lights.  I applied more fixative after.  I can honestly say that this project has used the most fixative of any other one I've done!  I think I will work on the background next time.  I want to do a varied/graded dark background to enhance the shape and colours of the ammonites.  I've never done it before, so I'm really hoping I can pull it off :)

Hmm.  I'm not sure if you can see this at all!  Since I still had some time and I was waiting for the fixative to dry anyway, I thought I'd start laying out my poppy painting.  The above is supposed to be a line drawing of the 2 flowers.  I also started lining up the shadows in the petals.  We'll see how well I can follow it after my first wash :D

Ammonites continued

It's more difficult to take a picture of the project now that it has fixative on it - there's a sheen that's reflecting the light and making it difficult to see the details.

Anyway, now that it is covered with it's first layer of fixative, I was able to work with the dark details with more confidence and accuracy!  I worked on adding more details to the sandy portion and shading on the ammonites themselves.  There's just a little more work to do on those two areas, but it's almost done.  I'm going to add a little more white to the ammonites as well, and then I will put in the background.  I will likely add fixative at least twice more before this project is done, but it's coming along nicely I think :)

3 Projects!

No new picture today.  I spent my time working on multiple projects.  First, the ammonites.  I lightly rolled my kneaded eraser over the whole image to lighten everything up and then coated it in workable fixative.  I lightened it because once I spray the fixative I can't go any lighter on the image than what's under the fixative.  I can always go darker though.  Since I had to wait for it to dry before I can work any further, I decided I might as well use my time by starting some other projects :)

Next, I worked on a project my sister gave me (one of the "perks" of being the artist in the family, lol).  She's getting married in the fall and wanted a thumbprint piece for the guests.  I took some samples of online thumbprint pieces and worked on that for a bit.

Finally, I started working on a poppy painting that I've really wanted to do.  The poppy image is from oriental poppies in my garden this year and they just looked so pretty I felt inspired to paint them!  Mostly I've just done a very rough sketch to place the lights and darks and get a feel for the project.

Not a lot of work done on any one piece, but all together a lot of time was spent.  It was great though because I completely lost track of the time!  I love it when that happens :)

Charcoal Ammonites - Almost finished stage 2

Progress continues about as expected on the ammonite fossil.  Today I concentrated on the sandy/grainy section.  I wanted to add more texture as well as definition and form.  I wanted the sandy area to feel look solid.  I'm not 100% sure that I've achieved what I wanted there. I think I may have a bit TOO much form.  I need to consider carefully because my next step is to cover the image with a workable fixative so that I can begin work on the background.

As this image is being done completely in charcoal, I've noticed that when I apply anything to "smudge" into the paper, the opposite happens.  I understand that rubbing should cause some of the medium to "lift" onto whatever you're rubbing with.  It's just that it isn't always the effect I'm going for. So I've had to be extra careful with erasing and brushing excess bits off because that causes a smudge more often than not!

Adding dimension with lights and darks

 

I had a very busy day today, but fortunately still managed to squeeze about 90 min in my studio!  To me, this stage is a bit fiddly but that could be that I'm not very practiced at it yet.  I spent my time, darkening, lightening, blendening and erasening

blending and erasing, then darkening and lightening some more.  It's kinda like troubleshooting problems and issues on any task.  You look at the image, compare with your subject and try your best to correct any issues.  I'm having good progress I think, but this part of the process will be continuing next day too :)

A real vacation!

I have had a lot of extra time lately since my position was terminated at my job, and I've been spending it re-organizing my house.  It's a pretty large task that I've been trying to get to for a few years and I think I'm making headway.

Today I got the rare pleasure of having the day to myself so I went about tackling my studio!  It was awesome!!  I can't help myself, I'm a bit of an organizer - always have been.  When I was little, I used to take my toys out of my toy chest and find different ways of putting them back in: largest first, in a circle, by colour, stuffed or plastic, etc.  I can't stand too much clutter, I get very anxious and it's so very distracting.  Anyway, after a about an hour and a half, my studio looks much nicer and more organized.  I felt much more comfortable attacking the ammonites after all that :)

On Friday I left the piece looking like this:

So I started by defining the shapes a bit better and getting in some of the details.  I worked in the ridges on the front ammonite and defined some of the larger "bits" of the sandy portion.  Then I worked in the texture with "squirkles".

I started adding some white to highlight the brightest portions.  I still have to smudge some of them in a bit and darken the shadows more.  Definitely more work to come, but not a bad day's work I think!

Ammonite progress

Today I got to work more on the requested ammonites.  I added scrapings of charcoal to my sketch and then rubbed that in with a piece of felt cloth.  Then I applied my pen eraser and kneaded eraser to start creating the shapes.  G was very curious about the process and when I stepped away she had added her own touch to the piece.  You can see addition as the odd lines on the left of the ammonite pair.  It's nothing that can't be fixed though - gotta love her experimental spirit!

Ammonites

I know I haven't posted in a few days (okay more like over a week), and I apologize.  It's been an absolutely crazy few weeks in my house and I haven't had a spare moment to think, let alone do any drawing or painting.

I haven't been completely lazy however.  I have been reviewing the books from the library and taking notes.  I've learned a lot from them so far, including how to organize what I draw in a more useful manner.  Gurney and Kinkade recommend having a variety of sketchbooks for different purposes.  One small one for each type of subject (i.e. trees, flowers, people, clothing, etc), one bigger one for notes and thumbnails when you plan a new project, and one for notes taken from workshops, books, videos, etc.  I absolutely LOVE the concept of organizing my ideas and work in a better manner so that they can become references and resources instead of a shamble of mixed up stuff (which is what I usually have).

As well, I recently had a request to purchase my ammonite picture.  It's not a picture I'm 100% in line with though.  There were a LOT of mistakes.  Instead of selling that one, I asked if I could do it again.  Since I have no other projects on the go I started work on it today :)

A few of the changes I've made is: 1) working from the actual object instead of a picture of the object, 2) a darker shade of paper, 3) a smaller scale of paper, 4) actually fit the image to the paper.  I plan to use charcoal and conte for dramatic effect.  I hope this turns out as cool as the image in my head!