Sunday, January 28, 2018

Splash of colour

For the final project of the week, I was very happy to come back to reality! While an exploration of marks, was just as desirable as deviating from normal colour profiles - I only wanted the colour deviation. Illustration wise, I wanted to return a little more, to my comfort zone again - realism.

It gave me the opportunity to use one of my favourite colours though, - lime green! Now I just had to find, a suitable reference image...


Source image - free download


I ventured to Pexels.com, for photographic inspiration. Luckily I found some, in an adorable moggy! It helped, to go with a monochrome picture, so I wasn't tempted to veer into original colour territory.

I wasn't necessarily looking for a cat, they just popped-up in the feed, and too damn cute to pass by!


 Initial sketch


Rough sketch in charcoal, first. Then my lime-green, soft pastels went down. I've learned, it's easier to start with a light application of charcoal, then put as much of your soft pastels down, as possible. Only then, do you go in with a heavy application of charcoal, for shading, afterwards.

If you go in hard, with the charcoal first, all your pastels will have a black tinge, where they come in contact with the charcoal. So the dark shading in charcoal, was the final application to go down.


Title: Techno-Cat


I really loved how the lime green, orange and yellow went together. While picking the colours was completely intentional, I didn't know how they would look together, until it was done. The yellow and green, gave the moggy an almost fluorescent appearance. Which was perfect for the name I chose. Techno-Cat.

They look like they're resting in the lights of a rave party. David said perhaps it should have more of a smile on it's face. But I think if I were a moggy, trying to get some rest at a rave party, I'd be pretty annoyed by the bright colours and noise too!

Once again, I loved this exercise for experimentation, and ultimately, story telling. Doing something different to a realistic picture, begs to ask the question - what's going on here? Which is true of abstract art, in general. My work is not exactly, abstract yet. But I'm getting there, one exercise at a time!


2 comments:

  1. Nice. Interesting thing to look into some day for you might be tbe painting technique referred to as grisaille. This is where a painting is done entirely in values, often black but other neutrals work, then glazed with color. You dont get the vibrancy but you do get nice depth. You discovered this in reverse:) btw, I gave up on wordpress because of tech issues that I simply could not fix. . So far, blogger appears to be working. Fingers crossed. spinsnips.blogspot.com

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    1. Thanks Linda. I will check-out the grisaille technique. Sounds really interesting. Also, will love to visit your new blog. Yay!!

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