The roster artists did a secret one last Month of Love day for the leap year! The theme was seasons and I highly suggest you check out some of the amazing work displayed today. I personally been wanting to do a series of flower faces. For this piece it needed to be bright and colorful! It is spring, which is full of life and energy. I do a lot of horror themed work and this is a good change in pace.
12x12 chalk pastel on BFK RIves paper.
I notice people really like these time-lapse video, so I'm going to try and post longer ones. After seeing the color quality of this video, I'll be researching cameras. The color is SO far off, but at least you can still see the values clearly. In all my videos I do lot of trial and error till I'm happy with the color and drawing. I think this history of color is what gives my illustrations more life. I also want to say that it is truly useful to not be precious with your work. Sometimes you need to be willing to destroy your illustration, so you can build something better. It may help to think "If I did it once, I can do it again." An excellent artist to follow for this is Vanessa Lemen. She did 2 post on Muddy Color: Painting Process and A Spontaneous and Responsive Process.
In my last post I spoke about implied lines in my composition. As you can see below (middle image) I use a lot of implied lines to help your eye travel around the flower petals in a spiral. I then had to use the background to keep your eye within the center. Because I used such a blunt and centered composition, I wanted to continue this theme of symmetry by making the subject looking directly forward. Everywhere outside the face has a lot of energetic, organic lines and the smooth face makes a great contrast and gives the eye a place to rest. And with all these swirling organic shapes everywhere, I knew I needed to anchor the piece was horizontal implied lines (far right image.) My line work is naturally organic and an instructor pointed this out to me one day. Since then I try to incorporate geometric (strong horizontal and vertical) line work to help contrast and strengthen my organic way of working.
I turned to a lot of my favorite artists for this project. James Jean and Loish were big influences I think. I also really wanted the character's face to have very open bright eyes. I thought instantly to the Forest Spirit in Princess Mononoke. I always loved how "knowing" those bright eyes seemed.