illustration Friday - Poise

I've actualy been meaning to post this for a little while and this week's Illustration Friday topic gives me the perfect excuse. I've finally finished Baby Sprout's name painting as mentioned in this post. And since the Sprout's name means to be graceful and beautiful which are characteristics of having poise, well then this goes nicely.

So without further ado:


I have incedently also been wanting to post my process for this painting. I really the tone of an image is the most important thing, you have to have dramatic lights and darks to make it come alive. This is something I'm always working really hard to get right, and it is often quite a struggle to keep track of all the tones all the way through to the finish. Too often I'll look back at a painting and realize that I could have pushed it just a bit darker here or there..... Anyway I knew it would be hard with this piece because it's a twilight-lit scene so before even starting the painting I basically did the entire thing in pencil first, on the board. Then I painted over it using my pencil shadows as a map. I took this picture mid-stream to show what I'm talking about:



It was a bit time consuming this way but it was much easier while painting to remember where and how dark I wanted shadows to be and where the lightsource was coming from.