Saturday, January 15, 2011

Tulips Coming to Life

I've been working on this drawing this week and having so much fun with it. As in my last post, I mentioned that I began with the flowers and leaves. I worked them in Prismacolors and Lyra Rembrandts and then added Prismacolor Verithins on top to burnish and fill in areas I wanted to appear solid. I took the original photo on my deck and did not like the background so I played with the image in Photoshop, cut out the vase and tried different backgrounds. It took me several hours of learning how to make it work in Photoshop and choosing a background, but in the end decided on this blue & gray cloudy sky.

I began the background with Periwinkle, Cool Grey 30% and white in the dark and light areas, added solvent and then added several other Cool Greys, Slate Grey, Blue Violet Lake, Imperial Violet, Powder Blue and more white. I blended with the brush and then with my fingers. When I finished the background, I found there was too much of a disparity between the solid paint-like appearance of the sky and the textured pencil application of the flowers. I didn't want to add solvent to the flowers because the solvent sort of mushes the colors together and the petals will lose the transparency of the layers of color showing through each other. So I decided to lightly burnish just about all of the petals and leaves with a colorless blender so that the texture of the board wouldn't show through and they would stand out from the background. It worked and next I am onto the bottom area.

6 comments:

Debbi said...

Kendra I am blown away by how productive you have been lately! I love the tulips drawing. Between the sky background and the motion of the tulips the drawing has so much power! Not to mention the colors.
Can't wait to see it in real life.

AND a big congratulations on getting into the Explore This 7! show.

Sue Clinker said...

This is quite stunning and I'm very impressed with your bravery in adding a background after doing so much work on the leaves and petals ... I'd be terrified of making a slip and spoiling the lot :o)

Kendra said...

Debbi, I'm working hard for our exhibit! Like you said, we all work better with a deadline!

Sue, actually half way into the background I started to panic and hope I wasn't going to ruin the painting after all that work on the tulips. It just had to work.

Unknown said...

I just saw your candy apples in the Signature Showcase book! It's fantastic! You're very talented and a great inspiration to me!

Kendra said...

Thank you Katherine! I am happy to be a part of the Signature Book.

Anne Winthrop Cordin said...

These are so gorgeous Kendra,love the way you resolved the background with the sky. And thanks for the details of the process.Just added your blog to mine!