Leaf Ghost #19

With some quiet time to myself on a Saturday morning, I tested some old Dr. Ph. Martin’s Bombay India Ink on a simple leaf ghost. I’ve got a set of them, so I went with Tangerine for an autumnal orange (in anticipation of it ever not being too hot to leave the house) and Aqua for a complementary background.

Whether due to age or by its nature, both colors were thick and sticky. The bottles they came in were tall and narrow. And between those two factors, they were a mess to work with. At least they looked good on the page.

Leaf Ghost #18

Based on the almost complete success of Leaf Ghost #15, I decided to do the same thing with one exception: rather than using a brush and a wash that smeared the ink, I painted the leaf color using an airbrush. Oh, and I reversed the colors, using Winsor & Newton Peat Brown for the background and Art Creation Yellowish Green watercolor for the leaf.

This is the first time in quite awhile – since my undergrad days – that I’ve used an airbrush for a two-dimensional piece on art board. It’s also been around that long since I used Friskit film to mask off the parts I didn’t want to paint. Back in college I developed a hesitancy about using the stuff because it wasn’t exactly cheap. Now I’m better able to afford it, but the hesitation remains. It felt good to actually put it to use.

The only hitch I encountered was a problem with the airbrush jamming, which of course had nothing directly to do with the artwork itself. I have one final experiment to try: airbrushing the color first and adding the ink afterward. Depending on how well it works, this may be the first technique I settle on for creating non-experimental final products.

Leaf Ghost #17

I thought I’d do something soothing for the last weekend before the start of classes. 

Gouache on paper. I used the same masking strategy that worked for #13. Overall it was an even bigger success here, because the opaque gouache went on much thinner and much easier than watercolors. The yellow was exactly what I wanted. I think I got too much water in the greens, which made them go on less evenly. Something to think about for next time.

The only rough spot was the masking tape pulling up part of the paper on one spot toward the bottom. I’m not sure what happened, because the paint under it should have been dry. I walked away from it between passes.

Fortunately I already planned to go back over everything with a fine detail brush and clean up the gaps between masks. So I fixed the rough spot while I was at it.

This is the 15th leaf ghost in the current sketchbook, which means I’m a quarter of the way through it already. It’s also the first time I’ve put a drop shadow on a painted ghost. And I think the leaf itself looks a little like a cartoon ghost with a pointy hat.