Knock Down Drag Out
I took me quite a while to figure out that it was BLACK sumi-e ink (Nicked from Paul's art supplies, shhhh!) diluted with water in a misting spray bottle that was needed on the bark. I was trying red and brown transparent water color and photo retouch concentrates at first, but it wasn't until I hit the surface with that strong, jet black ink that it "popped" into looking real. I hadn't realized how dark the fissures are in real trees before.
Then I went over the whole tree again with straight pale taupe acrylic on a dry house paint brush, coloring just high peaks of texture.
The now strong contrast between a darkened basecoat and new highlights bothered me. It had lost most of the original brown base and taupe midtone. I re-worked that a bit, knocking down the highlight patches with more black spray and increasing the highlight tone to an even more pale yellow. It's coming along. Almost there.
I go at it again in daylight on Monday and plan to find the faux-mojo in me to finish it. Some parts of branches look so much like real wood (not pictured), that I have to stop and think whether I'd forgotten to cover the real branches with cement. Weird.
Then... It's Leaf Central, Inc. around here! I thought I'd start by using the littlest leaves first on the outer most tips and then place the next smallest and see how that amount of foliage looks.ART BONUS: New Buttons Are Ready to Ship Out!
Yesterday's couch project was to package up the NEWLY RELEASED Halfland's Second Highly Collectible Limited Edition Memorabilia Buttons! The illustration on them really captures the "Halfland's-Pink-Snail-traveling-home-at-dusk" cozy feel.They go out Wednesday as gifts to patrons of this project, friends, supporters, and readers of this blog. That means YOU!, if you've emailed me your address privately, If you haven't yet, there's one waiting for you (just email: nobledesign[at]sbcglobal[dot]net and just put "button" in the title.) I'd love everyone who wants one to have one!
It's a small way of thanking you for visiting this place. You are a treemendous inspiration in my progress, as you can see.
Uh-oh! For a minute I was afraid you had knocked down the tree and dragged it out of the studio!!!! =o
ReplyDeleteI can't get over how feakin' GOOD it looks!!! I'd love to see a few patches of nice fuzzy green moss nestled in there somewhere - a little added color/texture. Hey, a request. Any chance we could get a really nice big pic, like maybe upload the full-size thing to Flickr? I really want a closer look. (and I;ll bet I ain't the only one..... )
I wanna See the Full Sized thing as well, But When its done ofcourse
ReplyDeleteand I can't wait for my Button, Its so nice of you to send them out like this!!! :-)
Absolutely, Mike! You mean high res shots from a variety of angles after the bark is painted? Or later when all leaves (AND MOSSES!) are on the finished tree?
ReplyDeleteI'll have a whole Answer Tree set on Flickr showing the earliest building of it through to paper leaves with answers soon! Start thinking of a question to whisper in there! :)
Thanks, Ben! I hope you'll enjoy having it! Wear 'em, share 'em collect 'em all!
Crikey Shelly, This tree just keeps getting better and better. The 'othersidetree' pic really shows just how wonderful and life-like your texture is. If it wasn't for the room in the background I'd be fooled :)
ReplyDeleteI'd ask for a button but sending it halfway around the world is probably silly.
Thanks so much, Rich! It's really coming along!
ReplyDeleteAnd duh, there are buttons going everywhere, Europe, Australia, South America. You better get in on this button passion! C'mon, it's a little piece of cinematic history (according to me). Write me!