Monday, December 30, 2013

Key Series

I haven’t been able to post anything in a while. Who would have thought that there are places in the U.S. where you can’t get Internet. I am now one of those people sitting in coffee shops on my computer.

We have recently moved across the country, and finding work has been more difficult than I first imagined. So unfortunately my studio time has suffered. I am currently working on making a studio space where I can continue working on my illustrations.

Until then, I thought I would post some older art work.

This series initially started out as sketches in my sketchbook, and were originally part of only one composition. I had spent so much time drawing and researching keys that I thought it would be a waste to make only one final product.



To create uniformity, I worked on all three of these at the same time. I had an old book that I took the pages out of and wrinkled up all of the pages. I then used a spray adhesive, sprayed my illustration board, and pressed all of the wrinkled book pages.


After the book pages were dry on the illustration board, I used a thin wash of matte medium gesso in the center of the boards. I wanted the keys to have a semi-blank background, but the surrounding to have the texture of the words on a page.


After I drew the keys in colored pencil, I applied a thin layer of watercolor. When the watercolor was dry, I sprayed a light layer of fixative, then another thin layer of clear matte medium gesso. I generally like to wait a day for the matte medium to dry before I put on the layer of oil. After the oil was dry, a light brush with some colored pencils show cased the texture of the background.