Nautilus

 Mixed Media

21 x 15"

Strathmore Smooth Bristol Board

This is a piece I recently completed with the hopes of gaining more experience with colored pencils.  This is a new medium for me even though I purchased Faber-Castell Polychromos some time ago and added Caran d'Ache Luminance pencils for this project, I have completed only one other piece and used a very limited palette.  I really wanted to practice layering and shading and include other mediums in the mix.

Because this was more about color application and I didn't want to think about design, I dowloaded one of Ben Kwok's wonderful templates from the Facebook Ornation Creation group page and enlarged it at a local print shop.  The image itself measures 15 x 11".  I found out this was quite a bit of real estate to cover, this took about 45 hours to complete!

 Detail of center.

Detail of Golden Interference Orange Fluid Acrylic Paint

The interference paint in some areas really made things pop.  From one angle the paint appears orange and from the opposite angle it appears teal.  The little ovals all around the edge and the swirl in the center were painted with Golden Iridescent Copper Light. This photo also shows the need for mastering the waxy bloom of layering colored pencils.  Even with the use of Gamsol between some of the layers, my heavier dark color application at the end produced bloom.  Gotta work on that!

Speaking of layers,the following shots show the progression of color application which began with a light wash of Daniel Smith Hansa Yellow Light watercolor and then worked up from there with the Caran d'Ache Luminence colored pencils.

Thanks for stopping by!

Tangled Peacock Moth

Tangled Peacock Moth

Tangling and Copics, that's been so much of what I've been doing lately.  All I can say is it's so much fun to see things take shape and I just want to start another!

Ben Kwok posts such beautiful blue line templates on Facebook that adding the interior design with tangle patterns and then color application with Copic alcohol markers provides so many creative avenues.  So here is the moth template with a few design changes of my own.  I continue to want to give a peacock feel to everything, I hope the moth doesn't mind the cross breeding!  I'm still experimenting; I've used the micron pens in 01, Copic alcohol markers, graphite pencil and a glitter brush on Xpress It card stock.  That's about it.  I need to take a break and get back to my watercolors soon.  Well, maybe one more tangled template.......