Monday, July 16, 2007

Playing With Colors

This weekend I did a color study for the Parrish/Rockwell project this month. I started out by doing a monochromatic blue underpainting on the back of my vellum. Parrish did blue monochromatic underpaintings - to great effect in the lighting of his work.

What I found:
  • Note: the background is the blue coming through the back of the vellum.
  • All that blue coming through made it difficult to get the right color choices in the outfit. (This is why the uniform is well, not a uniform color - I think maybe the combination on the hat is the closest to what I want, but I'm not entirely happy with it either.)
  • All that blue coming through on the face was near impossible to get rid of - as a result the face just kept getting more orange.
  • I need to be more careful with the underpainting, if I do it too quickly it will be streaky.

So, I'm on to another color study. This time I may choose something entirely different for the underpainting - I rather like that idea, but the blue may not be working because its CPs and not oils, or it may not be working because I'm not Parrish! :-)

2 comments:

Belinda Lindhardt said...

Rose, this is working really well i can see your making steps as you go :) i am glad you did the colour study

this is going to be great. :)

Another thing i am noticing is maybe have a look at his eye / forehead - i know your not doing detail etc there yet but maybe just double check that on a reference .. i am not an expert on faces but something about the eye looks a little off, maybe his eyebrow is too far down its amost as if you can see too much of his forehead for this profile ?? hmm not sure ...

looking forward to seeing more tho this is great to watch :)

Rose Welty said...

Thanks Belinda for your encouragement. I agree that something is not right about the eye/forehead - actually that whole dark side of the face. I keep trying different things, but I can't quite come up with the right thing.

Thanks again for stopping by!