Camul postcards good to go

I've finally broke down and worked on some Camul merchandise.

First up: Postcards

Yeah, I know what you're thinking. That I did it for Michelle. Well, I'll have you know, I totally did.

So, Michelle, here you go.

"Camul" painting finished

And there you go.

Camul may be on his last leg

I had a marathon painting session this afternoon (O.K., it was only a few hours), and Camul may (may) be finished. Except for the varnish, of course. I'll look at him again after I haven't for a while, and I'll post him post varnish.

Another day of painting Camul

This should give a better idea of the direction the painting is headed (compared to the underpainting post). The underpainted background is overpainted (is that a word?), and now the sky is blue/purple and the sand is yellow/tan. Hopefully it makes more sense now.

I noticed as I was painting that I'm not all that satisfied with how I gessoed the board. I think I laid the gesso on too thick, and all that prickly texture that I had in my other animal rots paintings isn't there. So the underpainting doesn't show through as much as I would have liked and the way I would have liked.

Here's a close-up of the sky in Jeeraffe (on the left) compared with a close-up of the sky in Camul. The gesso texture is definitely thicker than I want it.

I hope the end result still works because it's too late to do anything about it now short of starting over. And I won't be doing that.

Camul painting in progress

The progression of Camul: Report #1

I decided to scan Camul in as I go, and I'm trying to line up the images into one file in Photoshop so I'll be able to put an animation together of the progress. I'll post that animation here when he's finished.

This first image is just the original sketch transferred to the birch wood where I'll be doing the final painting.

Not much to see here.
Just move along.

This second image probably looks a little odd, but it's just at the underpainting stage. If I gessoed the board the way I hope I did (and I'm hoping I did), there will be enough texture so when I start painting subsequent layers, parts of this underpainting will still be visible in the valleys of the gesso texture. At least, that's the plan.

When I decide to use an underpainting, I try to underpaint the complimentary color of what the final color of the area will be, as in, the final sky will be purple with a yellow underpainting, and the final sand will be yellow with a purple underpainting.

In this case, the two colors I'm using for the final painting (purple and yellow) are also complimentary colors to each other. I'm a little worried it might get boring with too much of a lack of color, so I might have to interject colors that really shouldn't be there. I'll deal with that dilemma when it happens.

New sketch for Afrikan Beasties series

"Camul"