Monday, September 19, 2011

Guidance Dogs: Great Dane progress!

I began working on this Dane before the Oaxacan Big Cat, but its progress has been painfully slow.

It's my first contract job, one I was (and am) truly thrilled to be a part of, but my habit of falling prey to discouragement has been strong recently. The project's owner, Kirsten L., did encourage me to share my progress on each dog, so I felt that sharing it - as I did with the Big Cat - will help me get it done.

The colors are a mix of Prismacolor and Derwent Coloursoft colored pencils. The Dane's coat color / pattern is harlequin.

^ Earliest scanned stage of the Great Dane: the dog is lightly inked with a ballpoint pen, and the foreground is colored.


^ More of the ground plane has been primed, and the mountain in the background is primed as well; I used complements to make my hues bolder. (Pardon the vibrancy differences between scans; I should have color-corrected them all at once rather than separately.)


^ Local tones applied to the mountain. I hadn't meant for it to look so green, but my aunt and Camille assured me that it looks fine. Guess I'll stick with it!


^ As with the background, I used complements on the Dane itself to help its markings pop. A bit overboard in hindsight, but the end result will look nice.


^ Spots that were orange become Navy Blue, then black.


^ More Navy Blue spots...


^ ...are now completely black.


I will finish this dog as soon as possible so I can continue working on my next dog, the Rhodesian Ridgeback.





2 comments:

  1. This is coming along well Jillian. The mountain looks fine being more green. Distant items tend to become more blue-ish the further away they get. (Also less saturated) Any critique would be to remember hierarchy and rule of thirds. This only really applies to the mountain in the background as it's base is right in the middle and it's size kind of competes with the size of the dog. I love how confident you are with the colors though. You're great with Prismas

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cassi,

    Thank you so much for your feedback! (Makes me wish I'd posted the progress earlier so I could have applied your crits, darn.) It's obvious I haven't done any background work in a while; I should try to focus on that a bit at a time if I can. But thank you again for the compliment; I love Prismacolors. I bought my first set as a seventh grader, and they're still my favorite colored pencil brand.

    ReplyDelete