'Mrs. DuPre...' - watercolors, graphite, and colored pencils in 4 x 6 stillman and birn 'gamma'

someone asked if i'd be more specific about what i do on translucent paper.  yes, of course! 

  

this is the front and back of what i lay the translucent paper on while i'm drawing.   it used to be a pad of watercolor canvas, but i took the canvas out, flipped the cover over so the white on the inside was on the outside, and taped it to the back - which conveniently happened to be black.  both sides are useful.   i use the white side while i'm drawing and coloring, then i put the drawing against the black side to see if  i've missed any areas.  also, since i leave the eyes, lips, and outline of the nose free of color, i like to see if i like the amount of 'open space' i've left - the black shows you this instantly.

acrylic and graphite on waxed paper

i grabbed this face out of my manila folder of pieces in various stage of the process this morning;  i painted it several weeks ago with  white acrylic paint (i don't know how the turquoise got on there)...  i'm showing it against the black so you can see that there isn't much going on initially, and you can see the unpainted areas clearly.

here she is after i colored her with colored pencils and graphite.  i used my 8B pencil for the pupils of her eyes, otherwise it's just my mechanical pencil and miscellaneous colored pencils. 

when i was finished, i laid her over mrs. du pre, which is the page i finished yesterday in my 'daily book'....   i  laid the waxed paper on the page, it's not taped or glued down - i just wanted to see how it looked.   i liked it there but not enough to cover up mrs. du pre.  the thing that i don't like about using oil or acrylic paint for the skin is that you can't see through it;  colored pencils or oil pastels, on the other hand, are translucent.

starting from scratch, this time on strathmore 300 series tracing paper...  i drew the flower faces, colored them with an ivory faber-castell polychromos colored pencil, 

and put them against the black to see if i'd covered everything that i wanted to cover with the ivory.  after i touched things up a bit, i put the tracing paper back on the white side and finished coloring with colored pencils.

once i was done i tried putting the tracing paper over images in different books, but i didn't like any of the combinations.  i liked it best on the ivory paper in my daily book - but not enough to leave it there for good!  i taped it down temporarily so i could take this pic, then i took it off and put it in the manila folder for future use.

that's all there is to it...   thank you for your great suggestions and kind words last week...  : )

* * *