It’s been about 4.5 months since I last colored this painting…I feel like I’m in a confessional. A lot has happened since then and now everything is in place for me to continue AND FINISH this piece; especially since I want to submit this to an international color pencil show…the deadline is 3/31.
(as a side note…I’m using a different camera and I’m needing to perfect my skill with it a bit more)
03.14.2009 1st session
I mostly worked in the upper mid-section, where the large purple ring is with the light blue background. It took me about an hour to color the three concentric circles (light blue, orange, and red), the light blue area and the purple ring.
In this detailed view you can see more of what I did. Throughout this piece I’m using a variety of strokes and textures: the purple is a burnished line stroke, the red is a more solid burnish stroke, and the light blue and orange areas are a loose circle stroke.
03.14.2009 2nd session
During this session I felt a little more whimsical and did this strange bird creature near the upper right hand corner. If you look at the previous photo, you’ll see what it looked like before I colored it.
Here you can see the ‘bird’ more clearly. It has a red face, a high-top plume with a blue band, an orange color and a blue beak. The more I colored in this area, the more this guy came to life. Along with coloring the ‘bird’ I also added to the circles to the left of the bird’s head, adding the green, gold, reddish-purple and maroon arcs.
03.15.2009
It’s a little more difficult to see where I’ve colored, it’s mostly smaller sections below the big purple ring in the upper mid-section. The detail will show it more.
If you compare this to the detailed image earlier in this post, you can see where I’ve added more color. To me I mostly created to abstract fish (green in the upper middle, and the red/purple/gold fish just below it). I also did more arc sections below them and the background purple.
03.16.2009
(as you may notice, I still need some more time with the camera manual). For this session I focused on the areas around the ‘bird’ in the upper right hand corner; mostly the ring segments to the left of the bird and below the bird.
This whole area is finally coming together. I love playing with shadows, using them to determine which section is behind or in front of which section. In the lower gold arc below the bird, I made it look like the dark blue segment of the bird is stretched out over the gold arc and connected to the green cone shape. Without the shadow, the dark blue section would look like it’s in line with the gold and light blue arcs. The shadow gives it more depth.
‘Til the next time, Happy Coloring!
Maureen, The Mandala Lady
Art Progressions 