I’m down to the final part of Shasta’s portrait: the footbridge.
In a previous step I applied a wash of blue watercolor over the grey Canson paper to make a blue-grey bridge. Now I’m adding the final details on that blue-grey with colored pencil. What a difference a few pencil strokes make.
1
The bridge is composed of the original grey paper color, slightly tinted blue by adding a wash of transparent blue watercolor thinned a lot with water. And a little bit of white watercolor at the far end of the bridge. This gave me my basic color for the bridge. I had planned that from the time I chose grey as the paper color to use for Shasta’s portrait. I chose that color for many reasons. The tree trunks, the path, the bridge, and Shasta, are the places I used that grey of the paper.
This BEFORE picture looks pretty good as it is. It looks like a bridge. But the final details will really make it look realistic.
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This is a good example of using paper color in a background. In the previous pic you saw the basic “bridge shape” of blue-grey. That would have been a large shape to color in completely with colored pencils. So I made the paper color do the work.
Just adding a few well-placed pencil strokes over that color makes the wooden bridge realistic. Some jots and dashes make fallen fir-needles, a few rough lines indicate the planks. Adding a shadow under Shasta really worked some magic. In the BEFORE pic she looks like she is floating above the bridge. The shadow beneath her ties her to the wooden surface. In art, no object looks like it is on a surface unless there is a shadow.
3
This “Felt Grey” Canson paper is particularly well-suited for the bridge because it has little flecks and fibers in it that give the feel of weathered wood. You can see those paper fibers in the following close-ups.…
The colored pencil details. Just a few dots and dashes make fallen fir-needles and wooden planks on the grey paper. And the shadow added carefully under Shasta.
This detail really gives you a good look at the dots and dashes. They didn't take long to do.
My next post will be the finished portrait!
🐕 “Shasta”, an Australian Shepherd in a forest where she loves to hike with her beloved people.
🎨 Prismacolor pencil on grey Canson Mi-Teintes paper, with watercolor underpainting.
20 x 26 inches.
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