Keeping track of progress on creative projects
Festive holiday colors to finish the year.
The experiment here was to try two different colors for the background while using a single color (hatching and cross hatching) for the leaf. And I used a Copic C3 rather than N1 to make the shadow a little darker.
And continuing with media I haven’t used in awhile, it’s back to Copic markers. Meadow Green, Forest Green, Sky, Royal Blue and Prussian Blue. I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to do a blue and green Copic combo.
Back to gouache for the first time in awhile. These are the same colors as #86 only with the foreground and background reversed. Oh, and I did the drop shadow with a weak mix of black.
Taking the time to airbrush for the first time in awhile.
The colors are the same (more or less) as #117, except reversed. And here they’ve been applied in a watery mix onto mounting board (which I thought was illustration board until I got it out to cut it down to size). It’s an interesting experiment at least.
W&N Nut Brown and Orange made an unusually good combination, not to mention an apt celebration of the waning days of autumn.
Same brown on red color scheme as last time, only painted using wet-on-wet watercolors. I really should be doing these more often. They aren’t as time-consuming as the cross-hatched ghosts, and I love the textures and analog feeling of the watercolors. Even a digital simulation of the technique doesn’t produce visual results quite this satisfying.
W&N Deep Red and Nut Brown make a nice combination. I used a Copic Neutral Grey 1 for the shadow.
The source leaf was on the floor at Gates Barbecue when I was there recently on a blustery day. Though I usually don’t make connections between source photos and color schemes, I wanted something vaguely barbecue-esque for this one.
This was my first time using a straight edge for a leaf ghost since #16. I’d forgotten how much extra effort it takes to hold the edge in place and then move it ever so slightly for each new line.
It’s also my first time ever using fine line markers and letting stroke weight make the difference between foreground and background. The former is a Copic Multiliner 0.05mm, and the latter is a Micron 08 (0.5mm) recently purchased from May Day Paper & Post.
I’m thankful that I have a fairly well-established system for drawing ghosts at this point, because otherwise I would have gotten confused about what I was doing where.
The color scheme from #111 here rendered with W&N Sunshine Yellow and Nut Brown (and crosshatched with a dip pen, of course).
The novel twist this time is the drop shadow. I created it using a Copic Neutral Grey 1 marker, which produced a more realistic shadow in the more abstract drawing. The leaf now looks like it’s floating above the background toward the bottom but on the same plane with the background (or maybe actually part of it) at the top where there’s no shadow.
Today’s new trick: mixing colors by alternating between lines. The dark background squares are a combination of W&N India Black and Emerald, and the dark foreground is Nut Brown and Orange. The result is one of those techniques that looks different when you’re seeing it in person. The photo of the result tends to look more like single, darker colors rather than separate hues intermixed.
I've been working on this page from the Call of Cthulhu coloring book for what feels like forever. Somehow I just couldn't get it to where I was happy with it.
Part of the problem was my color choices, which I admit are a bit odd. But I’m also bugged by the line of sight between the human and the monster. They appear to be looking right at each other (rather than the human looking over his shoulder at a tower-dwarfing creature in the background), and that throws the scale way off.
Adding some grain to the image made it look a little better. But mostly I’m just glad to finally stop tinkering with it and move on to something else.
Yesterday’s colors only reversed. This time Lightning Yellow and Lemon Yellow are the background, while Maroon and Light Walnut make the leaf. As the drop shadow needs to match the background, this time it was Pale Sepia and last time it was Burnt Umber.
Copic markers have a chisel tip that’s great for covering large areas quickly (and ya gotta work fast with alcohol inks before they dry and don’t blend as well). On the other end is the brush tip, which works much better for small spaces and tricky corners. So for my experiment this time, for each color I did a first pass using the chisel tip for the squares with only one color. Then I did a second pass for the squares with both a foreground and a background in them.
It seemed to go well, though it required a bit more concentration than simply moving from square to square.
As much as I love how soothing the cross-hatched ghosts are to draw, I felt like I was getting into a bit of a rut with them. Thus back to Copics for an autumnal color scheme.
W&N Orange, for a delightfully Halloween-y leaf.
The experiment this time was to pause whenever I felt like it rather than starting and stopping only at the ends of passes. It worked reasonably well.
W&N Sunshine Yellow. I haven’t done much with this color so far, but I like how it looks here.
Still brown, but W&N Peat Brown this time. The difference isn’t super dramatic. Maybe a little less saturated?
W&N Ultramarine. I’m continuing to enjoy the subtle differences between darker inks and the black background lines.
I’m also a big fan of the unusual leaf shape. I love the lumpy, lopsided geometry. It also reminds me a little of Ubu Roi.
Same approach, with violet in place of vermilion. I love how the darker inks work together.
I also enjoy this leaf shape. It reminds me a little of Van Gogh’s “Cypresses.”
Good news for fans of the cross-hatched ghosts: this technique is working well with my schedule and my mental health, so I’m likely to stick with it primarily (maybe exclusively) for awhile.
Same inks as #101, looking lighter here because they’re on white paper.
The big experiment this time was more timing than technique. With the summer over and the new semester underway, opportunities for long drawing and painting sessions are fewer and farther between. However, dip pens don’t require a lot of set-up or clean-up (well okay, a little clean-up). So I tried drawing this over several days, doing one pass at a time between work-related tasks.
It worked wonderfully well, providing badly-needed meditative pauses. I also think the the result looks a little better, more evenly inked.
Another field of blue, this time with blue greens rather than greys in the middle. Working for stress relief rather than artistic innovation here.
Working with color on grey paper for the first time. That’s W&N Vermilion and Black.
I’m pleased with the result and will definitely return to this combination in the future.
For #100 I wanted to make a couple of significant steps.
This is the first time I’ve repeated paint colors. The hues and wet-on-wet technique here are the same as what I used for #84 way back at the beginning of Ghost Week two months ago. The difference here is watercolor board rather than watercolor paper. On the plus side, it didn’t warp at all. On the minus side, it absorbed the water so quickly that it made the wet-on-wet technique harder to apply evenly.
But more significantly, this is the first leaf ghost I’ve framed. I chose a shadow box frame to make the painting look more like a preserved specimen of something natural. It’s a fun effect, though I may need to re-attach the board to the backing with a different adhesive.
Most of this build was fairly straightforward. The bend on the sides was a little tricky to get exactly right, but it was easy enough to correct once the pieces started fitting into place. One of the forward dive planes snapped off, and the main periscope was a little fiddly. Beyond that this one was mostly error free.
I had fun putting it together. This is the first time since I was a kid that I did a cut-away model of a sub.
I found a couple of colors in Copic’s Blue Green range – BG15 Aqua and BG49 Duck Blue – that I hadn’t used before. With Yellow Red on the opposite side of the color wheel, I fell back on a pair of previously-used oranges for the background.
The new trick this time was a light grey (N1) for the drop shadow. I went over it twice to darken it without obscuring the background colors too much.
Still sticking with blue and grey.
The experiment this time was to work with two similar colors (Winsor & Newton Ultramarine and India Black) but vary the line widths. It’s an interesting effect. Not only does it create enough difference between the shades to clearly distinguish fore from back, but it also adds different textures. I can definitely see doing more with this.
Here’s two things I told myself I wasn’t going to do again anytime soon: grey paper and colored pencils. But I’ve been looking at some illustration work by Donato Giancola for which he used a mid-tone paper (more tan than grey) with colored pencils and other media. And I was encouraged to give this another try.
I’m glad I did. The pencils are still hard to work with, but I really like the results. Very ghostly.
More grey on blue, this time in gouache. I decided to abandon efforts to make it look neat and just go with big, visible brush strokes. It shows up more in the light grey than the other colors. That’s Cerulean Blue, Cerulean mixed with Titanium White, and two levels of grey made with Lamp Black and Titanium White.
I also tried an experiment, using Navy Blue for the drop shadow but lightening the paint for the lighter squares. It didn’t make a dramatic difference, but it’s noticeable when you look closely.
The leaf this time around was an unusual shape. On the page, it looks almost caligraphic.
I knew from experience that Winsor & Newton Ultramarine and Blue weren’t dramatically different. But after the close Copic blues last time, I thought it might be fun to try them together. I’m pleased with the result.
Still in a grey mood, and falling back on the Copics for an easy win.
My original intent was to use Cool Greys 3 and 7 for the leaf, but C7 had run dry. So I switched to C5 and C9, with a black drop shadow. The blues are B05 Process and B14 Light.
Anybody want a free bottle of Winsor & Newton white ink?
It’s been awhile (January maybe?) since I was genuinely displeased with a leaf ghost result. But this one seriously didn't work.
The black went on just fine with the B-5 nib, but the white ink was too thick. It clogged the nib, making it apparent in just a few short lines that it wasn't going to work.
So I decided to try finishing the drawing with a brush instead. I guess it's better than not finishing at all, but the brush was ill-suited for cross hatching. Definitely not doing this again.
Back to wet-on-wet watercolors. The new thing here is that I used only dark blue and dark green. I got the lighter shades by diluting the colors rather than applying them directly to the wet paper.
My leaf ghost goal for the year was to average one per week. I hadn’t expected to make it to the 52d before the end of June.
Ever since last week I’ve been excited about reversing the colors on a grey paper ghost. Though I’m pleased with the result, I think I like the white leaf a little better. More ghostly that way.
The other experiment this time around is spreading the drawing out to two sessions on two different days. That’s not a huge concern over the summer, but during the school year it will likely make it easier to fit cross-hatched ghosts into my schedule.
This one took awhile. It’s from the Premium series, promising “bigger, more details, more fun.” To which they could easily have added “more aggravation.” For the most part the extra level of detail was good, but at several points the model featured elements that bordered on design flaws.
In particular, a lot of the slots were in unnecessarily difficult spots. Some were placed on folds, which made it hard to fit the pins in. And others were placed less than a millimeter from another slot, and putting the pin in the wrong one caused no end of trouble. The entire build required hypervigilance to detail, even more so than an average Metal Earth model. I managed to catch myself before I made quite a few mistakes, and even so I messed up in three or four spots.
Definitely not one for beginners. This was #30 for me.
And it’s a continuation of my streak of building models of places where I’ve been. I admit I’ve never driven an actual Willys, but I’ve seen them in museums several times. And I used to drive a Jeep Wrangler, which is about as close as you can come without investing in a museum piece.
Most of the left half of this leaf was missing, but I thought that made it an interesting shape.
And so concludes Ghost Week 2023. Though it took up a lot of time and energy for the last seven days, overall I’m pleased with the results.
It’s been awhile since I did a collage leaf ghost. They’re fun to put together, and they look good. But so much work! I was at this one for most of the day, taking break every once in awhile.
In addition to the usual prep sketch, I numbered the squares so I could figure out how many of each type I would need to find in the old atlas I used as my source. For the leaf I decided to use the same forest land colors I used last time.
But for the background I went in a new direction. Half of the squares are from a Manhattan street map, and the other half are from a state map of northeastern New York. Cutting all those 1.5-inch squares out of specific parts of specific maps took some doing.
To make them more visually distinct from each other, I dipped each piece in water and then used wet-on-wet watercolors to paint them blue before sticking them down with matte medium. The foreground didn’t need paint, so it went on more quickly.
The result unintentionally became a comment on climate change and rising sea levels, with the cities submerged under blue and the wild mountains becoming an island. Funny then that some of the leaf squares are from the San Gabriel Mountains part of a map of Los Angeles. And one of the darker national park squares includes “devastated area” and a location identified as “Bumpass Hell.”
