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| the making of "The Big Bad Band" colored pencil |
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| The drawing After a process of sketching, re-tracing, & re-positioning, I begin with the best choice of image & composition. This looks like it was my last sketch then a tighter, more final drawing was made. |
| Beginning colored pencil Continuing to work with shading and dimension in mind, I darken the underlying hues I began with. Some areas will remain the lighter watercolor hue while other areas darken. |
| Finishing It appears to be such a huge jump between the previous image and this final one. All the small finishing steps have been made to get to this point, each step making big leaps toward a very finished look. These final steps are burnishing, adding the darkest darks, lighting effects, shadows, and finally the smallest details. The burnishing finally brings that messy color together: Using a colorless blending pencil, and/or a very light color such as white in the lightest areas, I "color" over it all. I avoid the darkest edges, and concentrate more on the brightest spots. This blends it and lightens it at the same time. I then go back and add the darkest darks, to go even darker where necessary, and to work toward the details. I will continue to go back and forth refining details, edges, and brightening highlights until I am satisfied. |
| Underpainting I begin the final with light watercolor. In this stage, I use the basic underlying colors lightly, just to quickly have the color as a base to the colored pencil. In this case, I chose to have brown under the soon-to-be-green alligator, and so on. Even here, I am beginning to create dimension to the characters in the way I am painting. |
| Main colors I then layer on the main colors of the character: over the brown alligator I add the green he was intended to be. The shading I have already established remains, as the characters become more finished- looking. |
| Every piece of art has "an ugly stage." In this case, the stage to the left is not too pretty as the colors are at this point "wrong," and very "grainy." You have to really believe in your vision for your art and in yourself, in order to avoid becoming discouraged. |
| It is rare, but this piece's background color was undecided until the end. I waited until I had the character's colors down to test which colors would work for the stage and background, complimenting the other colors and creating a good atmosphere. That is why the background is blank until this last image. |
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| rin sherman |
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