My Process

I have done enough of these now that I have fig­ured out a process for them. I have them nice­ly orga­nized in my trel­lo board with the cat­e­gories of image cho­sen, linework, colour, var­nish, and frame.

I’m still work­ing out the logis­tics of if it’s in the cat­e­go­ry it means it’s com­plet­ed or wait­ing for, but that’s a prob­lem for anoth­er day.

First I choose my image and then I decide how I’m going to crop it. Next I draw all my lines. First I draw them in pen­cil and then I go over them in either black, sepia, grey, or white ink. This is the part that’s new to me; a per­ma­nent out­line under­neath.  I will exper­i­ment with more line colours, as well as mul­ti­ple colours with­in the same image, but for now I have fig­ured some­thing out, so I’m stick­ing with it. My pen­cil is a water sol­u­ble pen­cil, so I could go in and erase, but I can also just let the water dis­perse it.

The next step is a bit tricky. I’m choos­ing the colours and work­ing with an unfa­mil­iar medi­um. Some­times I leave the colours sim­i­lar and oth­er times I don’t. The thing I’m try­ing to do right now is not use too many of the same colours between the bugs and fig­ure out har­mo­nious colour with­in sin­gu­lar bugs. I don’t have much expe­ri­ence in alter­ing the colours of my pho­to ref­er­ences, but I’m try­ing my best.

Some­times all an artist needs is anoth­er opin­ion to help them along. I’m chang­ing the bug on the left to more of a mustard/yellow ochre instead of the beige. Thanks Emma.

How do you decide when a piece is finished?

Even­tu­al­ly I will have a whole wall of these bugs and it will be won­der­ful. These are what I have framed so far.