Little progress

It was just getting far too hot for me in this room tonight and being bent in so close to the light was not helping. Anyway I got a little bit of work done. I got a good bit of shading filled on on the nose and it's pretty close to finished I think. The hair still needs tons of more work. I really don't like how my teeth show in the photo and I may lay some hair over it just to cover it up. I don't think it's really that essential. I'm still happy with the direction that this is heading in.
I have to say since I started this drawing I've noticed that a lot of the story books we've been reading lately are illustrated with colored pencil. It's made me think of the girl I went to high school with, her colored pencil work was amazing and she did some wonderful illustration work.

Colored Pencil updates

I defined three of the borders, and got some more sketching done. I also realized that I put part of the hair in the wrong place. I'm trying to figure out how to rid of the hair I put in the wrong place. Putting it in the right place is no issue. Some of the hair can just be blended right into the trees part of the background, but the hair over the board is going to be a bit tougher to remedy. I'm wondering if I could just spray it with fixative and then put in a new layers with the colors for the board over it. I know I can work with the extra hair, it may just look a little too thick, but really I don't want that. Other than the hair I'm really happy with everything else I'm doing. This is really challenging but I'm feeling rather good about it. I really like what I did with nose and the glasses, still just need to make this hair look right. I'm starting to fill in some background too around everything so the hair will layer over everything right and so the hair will still have that thin wispy quality of hair.

Another try with colored pencil

I'm having another go at colored pencil. I'm really happy with the last colored pencil piece I did and I've been wanting to try it again. Also I think the reference photo I'm using could only work in color. I thought of using it for a painting but I just really need a break from that right now. So far I have mixed feeling about this. This is a huge challenge for me, most of my face is obscured by my hair so I filled in a bit of the nose then just started focusing on the hair. I'm a little unhappy with the color right now but overall I don't think it's looking that bad, if I can just make it look like hair even if the color is a bit off I think I'll be happy. So far though I'm really happy with the nose.
The first photo is how I'm working on this, and the second photo is how I may orient the piece in the end. I'm not sure though. The photo looks really interesting vertical, but I'm working horizontal because the photo takes us more screen space if it's vertical. I like to use reference photos straight from the screen, I feel like most of the time I loose some depth of color and value when I print photos. I've also been working small enough to accommodate. I've been working on my sketch book paper on the last few pieces. My next piece may be larger, and if this works out I may experiment with different color and textured paper with colored pencils.
The more I look at these photos the better I feel about this. We'll just have to see how this goes. I don't think the hair looks too bad right now.

"Bear"

This photo is a little more true to life. I also updated my site with this drawing. I think I'll start a new drawing tomorrow or the next day. I may do a colored pencil drawing of that one photo I took at the zoo. I'm not sure when I'll finish the painting but I do intend to get back to it.

http://jessicamckelvin.com

Almost done

I got a bit more work done tonight and I finally figured out how to get the texture of the hair on the arm and I'm really happy with it. I'm a little unsure of the pattern of the shirt and may tweak it a bit tomorrow, but I think if I just spend a little extra time on it I might finish tomorrow. And now that I'm looking at it one part of Bear's (Yes the bear's name is Bear, she did have a monkey named Jack to be fair) second foot bothers me a little, and I'll fix that too. I just need to finish putting in the background and clean up those lines in the side walk, right now they all look pretty lopsided.

Small update

I finally got around to drawing out the borders, and I think I'm liking the vertical orientation. At first I wasn't sure but now I think it works. I think I need a little bit of work done in the second arm and of course the bears leg but then I can move on to the shirts and the background. I'm thinking maybe the composition could be a little thinner because it looks like the first body is going to be cropped at an odd place. I'll have to think about that. So far though I'm pretty happy with what I have done and I'm looking forward to working more tomorrow.

More work on my drawing

I didn't get started until late on this, so I didn't get as much done as I would have hoped I realized I have quite a few things to fix and the second hand has a few issues that I need to work out. I'll work on this tomorrow but I think I'll forgo the blog updates for the next few days so I can just concentrate on the work.