Drawing & Painting Mosaic

I was in the mood to experiment again, and decided to do a mosaic, but with colored pencils instead of paint. My inspiration was a basket of blueberries I have in the frig.

I've always loved mosaics, and love painting them (we'll get to the painting part farther down). Since I do so much colored pencil work I thought "hey, let's do one with pencils and see what happens."

I started with this rough sketch where I blocked out the colors for a more graphic approach, which I then tried to duplicate with the mosaic.

Doing a mosaic that's a rendered 3D form rather than a flat design takes much more work than it seems like it would. I mean, you can render something to look 3D and 'turn the form' easily with other media, so what's the big deal with mosaic? Why is it so much harder?

One thing I figured out is that you need to place the 'tiles' in a way that describes the form - which I did not do very well here. I placed them rather haphazardly, which kind of works against the form.

Also, the more tiles you use to render the object, the better detail you will get. Its kind of like resolution on a digital image - 300dpi will give you much more detail than a 72dpi image. So here its like I drew a 72dpi image and then had trouble getting enough detail.

The other thing is the grout. You can leave it all one color, or use it to help the design.  At first I had it all off-white, then I tried shading it to help shape the form. 

This little experiment isn't completely successful by a long shot, but I'm still really happy with it because I figured some things out, and the next time I attempt this it will (hopefully) turn out better.

One other technique thing - I found that burnishing the tiles to make them look smooth, and leaving the grout grainy, works the best for me. Unfortunately my hand can't take burnishing much. It gets very sore, and actually my whole arm aches after a long burnishing session. I think it would be possible to do the tiles with the Icarus Board if you're skilled enough with that to be able to control very small areas, and you're using wax-based pencils (like Prismacolors).

So, onto painting mosaics. I've done several pieces, all a little different, but all 'flat' designs, and with some combination of watercolors and gouache.

This one is based on a design in the Book of Kells.

I find that using the gouache opaque for the tiles makes them just a little bit 'raised up' off the paper, then you can come in with watercolor to do the grout, and it will float down the little alleyways and fill in nicely. You could also use acrylic for the tiles.

Here's a more abstract design. Gouache and watercolor again.

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This is one of my all time favorite contemporary mosaic paintings. It could be the real deal though, I'm not sure. I can't find out any info on who did it. (And it just so happens they've been re-running this show on PBS for the past several weeks.) 

Then of course there's this. A Roman mosaic in a museum in Tripoli. YUM.

Look at the subtleties in shading in that face and neck. Wow.

And this beautiful mosaic of Bacchus on the floor of the Met in NYC. 

Sigh. 

I have a ways to go. 

Gingham checks - so done with this

Oy. 

This one is a good lesson in 'plan where you're going before you start, or else you may end up somewhere you don't want to be."

This first pic is where I ended up taking this. I decided the gingham needed to be "more", and really beefed it up. But although I liked the cherry, and liked the gingham, I didn't like them together. They fought each other. 

So after walking away from it for a while, and coming back to look at it fresh, and knowing I couldn't leave it like that, I did this ~

I lifted it all off. And now its like a faded, tea stained old gingham. And I like it much better.

This piece was an experiment anyway, so its OK. Sometimes you just have to try something, and see what happens. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I could have just chucked this in the bin, but am proud of myself for wasting spending more time on it to at least make it work. 

I can sleep now.

Gingham checks - work in progress

This is a new little piece I'm working on.
Its cherry season, so I bought I nice bag of pretty red ones, and had to draw at least one.
I decided to try a little something different with the background. Rather than copy photo reference of something, I made up my own kind of 'loosey goosey' gingham check.

 So here is the first pass, with a Prismacolor Carmine.

Then another layer, this time with a Polychromo Pink Carmine. Polychromos are a little harder, and hold a sharp point longer (at least for me), so I did a really light layer to fill in the gaps some.

And then I added a shadow.

So now, onto the cherry!

Enniskillen Castle

Finished!

I skipped to the finish here, leaving out any more steps in the process. Sorry. Sometimes when you get into a piece its a drag to keep interrupting yourself to stop and scan. Like with this one. I just wanted to get it done.

I just kept going with more and more and more layers of greys, mostly, building up the colors and values until it was 'there'.

And because its in Ireland, it needed a nice bit of green grass to sit on.

I kept the pencils slightly dull, and let the grain of the paper work for me in making the stone texture.

This was done with Prismacolors exclusively. 

I used just about all the French Greys, Warm Greys and Cool Greys, as well as Putty Beige, Slate Grey, and Ginger Root. 

No Black.

The grass was done with Limepeel, Apple Green and Grass Green.

This piece was a fun challenge, since I usually do newer buildings.

(The two previous posts, here and here, document my process with this piece, in case you missed them.)

Next up is something with food. 

Castle update

I've started on the castle itself, after lingering over the sky.

This is an old stone castle, so its scruffy and uneven and has irregular color patterns.

Its tricky sometimes to keep the colors and values in check, and describe the form accurately. What I mean is, you have values that describe the form, like the light and dark sides of the building. Then you have the changes in color in the stonework, which sometimes fight with the light/dark pattern. You might have dark stone on the light side of the building, for example, which goes against the ideal 'light to dark' way of rendering something.

To add to it all, there are also cool and warm colors of stone, which ideally would be placed to enhance your picture; but since this is real life, those are usually uncooperative as well. Cool colors would be in shadows, whereas the warm tones would be out front. So here we're dealing with a good range of greys, which are all over the place, and I'm doing my best to make them work, and still have it look like the place its supposed to be (which is Enniskillen Castle in Ulster).

I'm using lots of greys (French Greys and both Cool and Warm greys) as well as one pass of Ginger Root to start giving it a bit of life. I'll continue on from here until I get it just right!

Another thing that can help or hinder your drawing experience are the photos you have to work from. Sometimes you get great photos, but more often than not, you don't. Either some nice person who has commissioned your drawing has gone out and taken photos that are: too sunny, too dark, out of focus, while its raining, with cars blocking half the building, etc. etc etc. Or you get photos that have been tarted up with Photoshop filters to look all glowy and warm in the sun, when in fact the building is as grey as old dishwater. And on it goes. So the challenge is to find the truth in there somewhere, and do the best you can to make an accurate rendering. It can be a challenge! Here I'm splitting the difference between all my reference and making the best interpretation I can.

Castle drawing

This is a drawing of a castle in Ireland.
Well, so far its just the sky.

I always like to do the sky first. Sometimes I do clouds, sometimes not. Sometimes the skies are greyer or bluer, depending on the mood of the piece, as well as what colors will work with the colors in the building.

 For this one I decided a nice, simple, gradated sky would work best. I slowly build up the color starting with the lightest blue, then do 'washes' of colors, much like you would do with watercolors or acrylics, only I do it with colored pencils.

I'm using Prismacolors for this. The colors in the sky are: Light Sky Blue, Caribbean Sea, Blue Lake, Non-Photo Blue, True Blue, and Cool Grey 10%. I could have probably done it with fewer colors, but because I'm me, I used more.

Also, when it could be done, I usually decide to put in another hour and give it one more layer.

I'll start in on the castle next, and when its finished the sky will probably get another going over to make adjustments and tie it all together.

Digital kids

Just finished some cute little pieces for an educational publisher.

For this kind of work, digital art makes sense, both for style reasons as well as time. The images are done to fit very exacting specifications, and sometimes changes need to be made, which are sooooooooooo much easier to do digitally than with colored pencil (or any other traditional medium). I was actually lucky this time though, and didn't have to make any changes to the final art. Yay!

These assignments exercise a whole different part of my 'art brain' than the pieces I do for myself, or even commissions to do house or building renderings. These need to be an exact size, each piece has to convey specific information, and the kids usually need to be definite ethnicities as well as ages.

Working digitally means having to use a whole different palette than what I'm used to for colored pencil work. Colors are labelled as Pantone numbers rather than "black grape" or "limepeel", for example. The nice thing though is that there is no 'sharpening' involved, and changing a color is a snap!

These pieces were all done with Photoshop 5.5, and the 'rough texture pastel' brush. I fiddle with the settings a bit to get the size of the grain just right, as well as the brush itself. I paint in layers, keeping each child, as well as portions of the backgrounds, on layers, which can be easily edited if need be. The texture doesn't really show at this scale, but its there. I sometimes leave it more 'texture-y' (like for the chalkboard), or paint it in to look more solid, depending on the object. 

I also use the eyedropper tool to pick up and copy a color exactly from piece to piece, like the chalkboard, floor, walls, orange chairs, etc., for consistency.

I use a Wacom table and pen, which gives me a lot of control over line width and pressure, which is great. (I can't believe I used to try to paint like this with just the mouse! That's like trying to paint with a big rock or something.)

So that's what I've been up to. I have an architectural rendering in the works, as well as some new 'fine art', so will post about those soon (or will try).

I felt like knitting, so finished up some little pieces I had started a while back.

Keep your expensive cup of brew hot, as well as protect your hand.

So much nicer than those cardboard sleeves they have at the cafe.

And they can be folded over twice to make a bracelet.

So you can wear one out, then when you get your cup of caffeine, unfurl it to wrap around your cup.

Two in one! Stylish and practical. 

They're in the shop.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

I've also been fiddling a bit with the blog. I'm in a really super big Spring cleaning mood, weeding and throwing out stuff in the house and studio, and its carried over to the blog. I feel some new art coming on, something a bit different, and somehow paring down and making space for the new feels right. Not sure I have things here just how I want them, but I'll get there. Trying new typefaces, layouts, etc. Sometimes "new" just feels weird for a bit, then it sticks. Sometimes it gets thrown out. We'll see where it goes ...

Circus Animal Cookies

I bought a bag of these at the store, to draw.

And I told myself I wouldn't eat any - just draw them.

And of course you know how that turned out.

The actual cookies are really nothing more than irregular shaped blobs, covered in frosting and sprinkles. They bear no resemblance at all to the animals they're supposed to be. And the frosting is kind of scuffed, and the sprinkles are all uneven. Rather unappetizing, actually. But they're pink! And full of sugar! And somehow iresistible.