Sketch... New Year!

Meow there, Monday!  Here we are again... the end of year.  So soon!  Anyway, celebrating the coming new year in Pantone's Color of the Year for 2014 - radiant orchid. And of course, it has to come in dots/circles for good luck, wealth and prosperity!  So, Happy 2014 to everyone!  =^.^=

Sketch... sexy X slinky

Meow there, Monday!  Holiday season is party season...  Something slinky and sexy, and navy blue.  I love, love, love blue...     =^.^=

Sketch... violet and stripey

Meow there, Monday!  Doing another fall/winter outfit.  Still skinny jeans of course, but in grey this time... =^.^=

Fuzzy scarf...  =^.^=

Illustration... Colored Pencil Magazine art challenge

Meow there, Monday!   This is my entry for Colored Pencil Magazine's online art challenge for November.  And finally, a portrait photo again!  Been waiting for a portrait art challenge since the last one several months ago.  The succeeding challenge photos were really nice but I prefer doing portraits or anything human-y figure-y...  This is my second attempt for this challenge, didn't quite like the first one I did.

Couldn't quite get the colors to look like the original illustration after scanning.  Anyway, it's rendered with watercolor pencils on a 9" x 12" Canson watercolor paper.  Trimmed a bit to fit the scanner.  Adjusted the color/brightness/contrast on Photoshop.  Below is the art challenge photo by Sally Ford.  As usual, we are free to do our own interpretation of the original photo.  I choose to do mine in color, as my selection of grey colors are pretty limited.  I don't normally do colored portraits, so this piece was a bit of a challenge... but it was a lot of fun!  Will certainly be doing more of there colored portraits!  Fun!

Now, for the process/WIP pics... Just some of the in-progress pics.  My style is that of render-and-wash technique.  I wanted the final piece to look soft, but slightly "textured" and a bit like an old photo...

Some greys and wash to tone down the final colors.

Some more grey and then the browns and wash...

Building up the layers...

Kept repeating this until I got the color intensity I liked...

Working on the details... 

Almost done!  

And this beautiful and inspiring song accompanied me while I did this piece... 

Hontou no Oto by Kokia, one of my fave singers!

Youtube, where is that auto-replay button?!

Yeah, looooooong post!  Please browse through the other portraits I've done too, clicky-click (here)...  If you like the song by Kokia, check out my portrait on Kokia, (here).  I've included some of my fave Kokia songs in that too.  Thanks for reading through this looooooooong post of mine!  =^.^=