Tranquility

Full of half-finished projects, my atelier always has something for me to work on when the time allows. For months, I’ve been slowly layering up gesso and sanding a canvas board to eventually try out my markers on. Now that it’s pretty much smooth and ready, I needed something to draw…

So, I thumbed through my Roxanne photo book and chose a composition with plenty of organic shapes. First I do a rough sketch on paper to get the proportions right then I stylize it into smooth pencil lines. Then comes about 2 hours of going through my markers to find the right color combination, in this case, a balance of warm and cool tones. From there, it’s all trial and error, searching to maintain visual balance and exploit the more interesting details.

I’m pretty happy with this study, both technically and content-wise. I tried to “bleed” the background into the figure in some areas and also explore with different ways to add the texture lines. The expression on her face and delicate lines gives the drawing a peaceful feel. There are a few other ideas floating around my head so I’ll do another study, experiment a bit more and then move on to the canvas board.