I actually thought to get a few work in progress shots on this piece, not many, but a few. I started with a non-objective charcoal drawing on primed foamcore, which I sprayed with alcohol to give a wash effect. When it dried I repeated the process with a brown watercolor crayon and got this underpainting:
Black and brown underpainting
The wash effects can provide an interesting value map to use as a jumping-off point to develop the work. I must say I wasn't particularly excited about this one, so it sat for several weeks.
When I did decide to go back to it, I started blocking in some color in oil pastel. Once I started playing with the oil pastels, I got "in the zone" so I
didn't think to get photos of more steps in the process. I chose the
colors intuitively, building off the brown that had already been
established in the underpainting. I was digging the soothing earth
tones and neutrals, jazzed up with just a hint of green and a very pale
pink to compliment it.
Good stopping point to snap a photo
This seemed like a good stopping point to check how the values (lights and darks) were developing. Squinting can help, but I just use my camera on the black and white setting. Normally I would just view it through the camera screen, but for the sake of blogging I snapped a photo:
Value check
Not too bad! Maybe just unify the lights in the lower left a bit...
Final values
Yep, that's it! So here's the finished oil pastel:
"Cocoon" Oil pastel, 6" x 9"
The finished work is a small, non-objective abstract piece in oil pastel on primed, acid-free foamcore. While I wasn't so gung-ho to work on this one, I'm glad I came back to it; I'm quite happy with how it turned out.
This piece is matted to fit a standard 11" x 14" frame, and is available for purchase from my Etsy shop:
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