Happy New Year! (Christmas 2009)

The last time I blogged, the work I was doing was for Christmas gifts, so I couldn't post them for fear the recipients might see their gift in advance (yeah, unlikely, but still didn't want to risk it). Work was kinda slow this year (I hear it was for just about everyone), but here is the artwork that I did in the months of November and December of '09.

This one was for the head honcho at the local CBS affiliate, WBNS-10. The client gave me pretty good reference on this one, and other than having to do some tight turns with the pen to do the logos and type so small, it was a fun one to do.

(Click for enlarged view)

Earlier in the year I did a pencil drawing of this subject (a company owner's farm house) that was used for company t-shirts for their annual picnic (held at the same place). For Christmas I was asked to recreate the drawing in watercolor to give as a gift. I rarely do realistic trees and grass (most of my "landscapes" are part of a cartoony background in a caricature!), but this was fun to do because I got to tap into my "inner-impressionist".

The hardest part of this one was doing the railings because with a watercolor, dark colors are painted around lighter ones, so if you are painting a very thing light colored thing, you have to be very careful painting around it so as not to obliterate the light color you're trying to preserve. Some artists use a masking fluid to cover over parts they don't want to accidentally paint over, but I just go with the "hold your breath and pray" method.

(Click for enlarged view)

This one is done in "ink wash" (or b/w watercolor). I've included the pencil sketch version as well to show how I first provide a detailed pencil sketch for the client and then use that sketch to do the final artwork. This one was for someone retiring to a life of yachting and golfing. Sounds good!

(Click for enlarged view)

This one was done as a gift from her to him. This scan is a bit dark and the colors a bit more bold than the actual painting, but I didn't know that until now because I just replaced my monitor yesterday and am discovering that old one was going bad quite awhile before it finally gave up the ghost two days ago. That said, orange is a tough color to work with because it is so bright and hard to create from color mixing. Fortunately I've done annual soccer team caricatures for a high school whose team colors feature orange as the main color, so I had a bottle of liquid orange watercolor paint that I bought for that project that I used for this one.

(Click for enlarged view)

That's all for now. More to come soon!
Happy New Year!
--Steve

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