RoboCharmer

I know I've shared versions of this before, but I did a scan of the work today so you could see the final product (my cellphone pics didn't do the work justice).  I'm really happy with the way this turned out.  It scares my wife every time she sees it, but even she thinks it looks pretty good.  For this piece, I call RoboCharmer (the original is called Little Charmer), I chose to work with acrylic to start.  I never went to art school so much of my learning came from bits and pieces I've picked up off the internet.  The article that got me started painting was about the process that Mark Teague uses to make his wonderful paintings for his books (if you don't know Teague's work, he is now best known for his illustrations in the How do Dinosaurs... books).  That is where I learned that I needed to start with a toned underpainting which is a process I've used for almost all of my work.  I usually use burnt umber for its warming quality.

 

Sometimes I fall in love with the underpainting, wishing I was done.  Wishing that I didn't have to move farther and thus possibly screw up something I liked.  But you've got to quickly get over that to move forward.  

When I got around to painting over the underpainting, I chose to use payne's grey, which I hadn't gotten my hands on before.  Little did I know that when I mixed it down with white, it looked really blue.  So when I finished painting the final, I was like crap, its super blue! I kind of liked it but knew that I wasn't done.  

When I came back to the painting on Sunday, I decided to use some Gouache since I knew I could add some really nice transparent layers to the piece.  Gouache is really interesting to work with as it can act almost as both a thin acrylic or a watercolor when you need it to be. I gave the painting a nice layer of burnt umber which not only toned down the blue but gave the impression of rust on the robot's face and arm.  I stepped back to look at my work. I was finished.  Finally.