On the Drawing Board: Works in Progress

I often show my work in progress paintings on my Facebook page as well as my Instagram account so that, for those of you who are interested in that kind of thing, you can follow along with an artwork as it progresses.

Below I've compiled all the progress photos from one of my latest artwork "Crow and Pitcher" as well as compiled some photos of where I am at so far with a new alligator and monkey-themed piece.

Crow and Pitcher

18 x 24 inches

Mixed Media on Aquabord

Step 1: I stain and splash up the Aquabord with various acrylic inks - here I used sepia, gold, white, silver, burnt umber, peach, crimson and lemon yellow inks.

Step 2, I sketch out a very rough composition in chalk pencil and then put an acrylic base layer down. Here I mostly used Payne's Grey, Titanium White, a little Cadmium Red, and Dioxazine Purple on the crow, and then later, on the water pitcher I used mostly Titanium White and Unbleached Titanium White. After the base layer is put down, I then fill in the details with ink pen.

Step 3: Some of the composition is decided beforehand but some of it I decide as I am working on the artwork. In this case, I decided the composition would be stronger if I added two more crows, in this case they are designs of crows on the pitcher. I also thought this would make a nice juxtaposition between the "real crow" and the painted ones. This also is a nice foil between my different styles of art - my more abstracted forms with my slightly more naturalistic work.

Step 4: During the final work on the piece I decided to add in some my 'fauxsaics', or watercolor paper I hand-colored, then cut up and applied to the piece with gel medium. I then varnished the entire painting  several times and painted the sides the panel.

This next piece I started a couple of days ago. It took two days for the inks to dry on the board before I started sketching out my composition.

This work is inspired by "Illustration of a Caiman" by Maria Sibylla Merian, though I have changed up the composition and used my own style in the execution of the painting. I mentioned this artist in a previous post which you can read here.

Current work in progress: 

to be titled

24 x 36

Ink and Acrylic on Aquabord

Step 1: Inking the board: On this piece I used silver, crimson, lemon yellow, peach, white, burnt umber and sepia inks

Step 2: Roughing out a composition and then filling in a base layer in Titanium White and Unbleached Titanium White acrylic paints.

Step 3: filling in details with ink pen. At this point I was still undecided how the full composition was going to work

Step 4: I left a gap in the alligator's mouth because I was either going to add in a snake or a jaguar to the piece, and the alligator was going to be biting its tail.

Step 5: I scrapped the idea of a snake or a jaguar and decided to have a monkey's tail caught between the alligator's teeth instead. So I drew a rough sketch of a Capuchin monkey toward the rear of the alligator with its tail stretching back over to the alligator's head / mouth

To be continued.....

This is as far as I got today. I hope to finish up the piece within the next week, sooner if I can help it, though the next 4-5 days for me are very busy as i have to help to install a show at JAM Gallery, rehearse with my band(s), and travel to meet with a doctor to get my eyes evaluated for an operation, among other things.

I'll post here with updates on the alligator and monkey piece as I have them, or follow along on my Facebook page as well as my Instagram account.