Summer, walking on the beach and going boating has gotten me in the spirit to keep working on shells, especially since I have been observing the subject matter so closely. Its on my mind and it makes me happy! I'm using the Ampersand cradled gessoboard and to get the surface color, I have white Colourfix primer tinted with Art Spectrum Liquid Spectrum inks, a few drops of red and a few drops of blue make this bluish-pink colored surface. I chose the Liquid Spectrum because the colors are concentrated and can be added to the Colourfix without watering it down or changing the consistency.
After laying down my drawing, I started by blocking in the darkest areas and the white areas. You can see my reference photos too. In the bottom photo (which is just part of the drawing) I'm working on just the colorful shells by adding a light layer of colored pencils. When I have the whole surface covered with pencil, then I will go back and add more along with solvent to fill in more of the surface. I love color, can you tell?
Last week for my morning class, I had them draw shoes for their assignment. I brought in all my shoes and let them pick one or more to draw. The surface we worked on is mylar. It doesn't take a lot of layers but can be worked on back and front. It was a great drawing exercise as well as for applying color. They all did a wonderful job, here are samples of a few that were finished and brought back today. In the top picture, the blue satin slip-on shoe was drawn by Cheryl who portrayed the sparkly beading very realistically. Rayne drew the brown lace-up shoe and gave it a beautiful design. Mary Lou worked with black and dark shades of other color to render the black patent leather and used Gold Prismacolor for the inside. The gold worked really well on the mylar. The bottom picture is of Cherry holding her lovely composition and drawing of three shoes. Didn't they do an unbelievable job?!
