Goals are part of a NEW Year, right? Well, sometimes life’s, life gets in the way of sharing all of the projects, comings and goings. I spend a lot of time doing, creating, designing, working and less on the sharing. This year, I’m going to try and change that. 🙂
Share more process. Share more technique. Share more glimpses into what’s happening in the Studio. I’m a technique junkie and I’m always exploring it in my work.
So here’s what’s happening in the Studio TODAY:
I’m amping up my illustration portfolio, so the last years worth of sketch work is NOW going to come alive. Today, I’m completing work on this mixed media piece I created.
This SEAshell piece was illustrated at 7 3/4 x 3 3/4 on Stonehenge paper. Paper is important. Whoosh, I LOVE PAPER! Ask anyone who has visited my Studio. 🙂 Using colored pencils (Luminance and Prismacolor), NeoPastels and NeoColorII, I took this project from sketch and brought it to life using HEAT on THIS.
Icarus Art Drawing Board – Invented by Ester Roi
I bought the Icarus Art Board awhile back and I have practiced different techniques using it taking quite a bit of time to figure out how I wanted to integrate this tool into my art plans. I LOVE the results. The board heats up on one side (warm zone) and has a cool zone. I can move my project back and forth between COOL and WARM to blend wax based mediums like colored pencils, pastel and watercolor crayons. So, I can draw on the cool zone, apply color, build up color and then move it to the warm zone to blend it out and give it a painterly look. It cuts down on production time and I’ve found a real rhythm working with it.
Let’s walk through the evolution of this piece. Here is how the background came to life.
Below is the final. Notice the speckled background. I used the grated shavings from the colored pencils (white, blue and brown) and sprinkled them on to the finished drawing. Then, using the heat of the board and a brayer, I placed a piece of tissue over the drawing and rolled the brayer over it embedding/melting the shavings into the art.
HOW stinkin’ cool is that?
The top illustration is the finished piece. The bottom version was digimixmashed with typography to create the FINAL print. I have a little TYPE tweaking to do and then I will be getting a canvas print. I’ll share more about the canvas print and it’s final stage in another post. So, follow the progress.
Get your Art on!
2 Responses
Marti, The Icarus Art Board is an amazing tool I discovered awhile back. One side of the board heats up, so you can move your project from the cool zone (drawing side) to the warm zone (heating and melting side). It’s an amazing board and has totally helped me to speed up my blending of mediums without the use of solvents that art toxic. You are going to love the neocolor. Well worth the investment. Enjoy!
wow very interesting. i am still so very new to it all i wouldn’t know how to put that heat board to good use BUT something i never heard of before. i recently bought a set of neocolor IIs but have not used them much yet.