Work-a-Week 2013: Project 4

View halloo, all! Cutting it close, I know, but I still have 50 minutes of Monday left in my time zone. :)

Well, here we are, at the end of the February (into March) 2013 Work-A-Week Project!

That's right, this is the final weekly painting to come out of the 2013 Sketch-A-Day Project for now. Next week should see the first of the regular State of the Artist updates for 2013. This is definitely not going to be the last of the Sketch-A-Day Project pieces to be completed, but it marks the end of the month-long project. I have a handful of other sketches from January that I am looking forward to finishing, but March sees the gear-up for my first major convention of the year, MegaCon, in Orlando, FL March 13-15.

So, how about I just quit my yammering and get on with the art!

 

For the last completed painting of the 2013 Work-A-Week Project, I chose a very popular piece in the poll: the seahorse dad and kids, and whooo, was this one ever a challenge!

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Here are the first few light washes for the background, made up mostly of: cerulean blue, ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, and ultramarine violet. I discovered, while working on the background throughout the course of the painting, that the blues I chose to use lift *extremely* easily. Depending on what you're doing, that can be very useful or very frustrating. When applying multiple layers... it becomes very frustrating.

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Mostly finished with the predominant background features (the seaweed, bubbles, and rock formations) I started laying down washes for the seahorse family. Dad and the kiddies are comprised of layers of cadmium reds, cadmium orange, naples yellow, and alizarin crimson.

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Deepening up dad and the kids (mostly dad) and darkening his tones from waist to tip from orange-reds to red-violet/purples...

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Details of the dad and the two top seahorse mer-babies.

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Clean size 1 brush and clean water to lift some of the reds for the spines of dad's tail.

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Adding pale cool blue tones to dad and kiddies for shadows... another place where easily lifting blues became rather frustrating once I started putting down more layers for the skin tones.

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Skin tones added for dad and mer-babies, mostly made up of: naples yellow, cadmium red pale, and a teeny touch of alizarin crimson.

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... and DONE!

*whew*

 

So, that's all, folks! This installment of the Work-A-Week Project is over, thank you for joining me and for voting on the pieces you'd like to see finished. I hope you've enjoyed the project, and stay tuned for more new artwork, convention updates, and upcoming projects!

 

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