Crawdad Tutorial 03

Crawdad Boy 08 With Crawdad Tutorial 03 it becomes apparent that fortunately, the blades of grass are interesting and are not distracting. Yay! I can continue to paint them in.

You may notice a magazine laying open on the desk, it is my favorite portrait artist’s magazine article showing the mixtures that she uses to paint different skin tones in watercolor. Look up Suzanna Winton to see this talented artist’s work. I apologize that I was unable to find this magazine in the studio so I can’t be sure if it was a copy of the Artists Magazine or the Watercolor Magazine. I subscribed to art magazines from the early 2000s to somewhere in the 2009 era. It was back when we actually looked for and read things on paper when we wanted to learn. Long ago, far away on a distant planet…

Crawdad Boy 09

Now to paint the little boy’s skin and facial expression. In this view, you can see how the skin tones look when they are wet. They may be ultra bright-looking right now but I don’t need to worry because I know it will be a lot less bright after it dries.

Crawdad Boy 10 See how the skin tones appear, they are so much paler after they have a chance to dry. I finished this painting and sent it digitally to the client for approval.

Crawdad Tutorial 02

Crawdad Boy 04 Crawdad Tutorial 02 continues with painting the next phase. The book client had requested a specific watercolor scene. As the areas of color begin to receive their light washes, you can see where the water is meeting the shoreline. There are grasses behind the main character and the horizon line shows through in the background.

Crawdad Boy 05 The brighter warm earth tones and the skin tone on the child are making my main characters come into a 3D feeling. This makes me confident that my plans for painting this scene are going to work out.

Crawdad Boy 06 You can see how I prop the little boy’s faces samples right where I can see them on my desktop as I paint. This kind of visual guide is a common aid I use to maintain consistency. After adding the dull green for the grass blade background, the color scheme seems good.

I begin to paint the brighter individual blades of grass behind him. The remaining tall grass blades are painted into the background immediately behind the little boy and in front of the hat.

Unpaid Research Crawdads

Have you ever considered all of the unpaid research that an artist does before they actually get hired to do the illustrations for a book? Imagine getting a request for a bid on illustrating a “Crawdad Boy” children’s book. In this photograph, you can see some of the unpaid research work completed during the negotiation phase of a contract.

This client fishes for an illustrator.

He asks to see his character (an 8-year-old mixed-race boy), who loves to fish for crawdads in the southern swamplands of America. I do a quick watercolor sheet full of 10-12 different angles of how I envision the new main characters’ faces in different expressions. The next watercolor sketch is an orange crawdad climbing out of a red bucket. These two items could be very helpful after the contract award because they would be what I use to make sure I could illustrate the characters the same way throughout the book. So, this seems like a logical expense of my time and energy.

The client okays what I share with him, including the character face examples, and the crawdad personality along with the general illustration style. He then requests one more test image to be painted showing the boy catching the crawdad with a hand fishing line, using a hot dog for bait. Okay. He said that he would be willing to pay $75 for this one test illustration after it was done. At this point, my gut starts to feel uneasy but I go ahead saying, “Awww, don’t worry Val this guy is sincere.” I should have listened to my intuition right there, but live and learn.

Portrait Lil’ Ben Redo 01

Portrait Lil’ Ben Redo 01, I am working on improving my craft specifically in the “realism” realm. Currently working with two grandkid images, this is Ben on the right. I am following Stan Miller’s suggestion to focus on up close views and get the realism down pat, instead of doing the whole body layout. Ben and cousin reflection Here we go again, and they say that the third time is a charm, right? This little boy’s portrait that is reflected back in a mirror has been quite a challenge for me to complete to the level I am looking for on it.

Here is the sketch laid out on the watercolor paper with “mastic” or “resist” applied to reserve the whitest areas. With the white areas protected I have an easier time treating the background with free wash layers without worry.

More background area is darkened with washes in blue and purple. Even though his reflection is going to carry the same skin tones, they will not be as light as the in-person skin tones appear.

A close-up view of where I am adding skin tones and hair tones along with some of that sweater shading. The yellow that you see is mastic reserving the white areas for me to be able to work with later when I do the details.
the big reveal.

Sketching the Eyes

I find sketching with a pencil relaxing and I especially love to draw eyes. I know that sounds crazy but it is true. A typical practice session for me is to find magazine or internet faces that I like the expression of and draw them in the evening. This was a lesson sketch session I did with a student who wanted to learn how to do facial expressions.

I wonder how many sketches like these have found their way over to the burn pile over the years?