Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Disappearing Desmond continued


Apologies for the late post, I spent the morning in Connecticut at a school visit, and the afternoon at a book talk given by the lovely Alison Morris at the Smith College Campus school- a follow up to the book fair yesterday where Grace and I presented and signed with a bunch of local author/illustrators. It was a busy day considering I usually sit at my drafting table all by my lonesome (with the possible company of my cats), and a needed break before the final stretch to my deadline.

Anyhow, here is the conclusion to last week's post about one of the Disappearing Desmond paintings. Just a few more to go, all the art will be done less than two weeks- eek!

When we left off I had just started to repaint the figures over the background layers:



Next I filled in the snowman and Desmond, dressed in blue to blend into the shadows:



Then I worked on the two figures behind him, beginning patterns on their clothing:



More layers, on the trees especially:



And the finished painting:

6 comments:

Elaine Magliaro said...

Anna,

The finished painting looks great! I love the colors.

Anna Alter said...

Thanks Elaine!

Abigail Marble said...

Do you know ahead of time how you are going to dress the characters? The colors and patterns they are wearing seem totally organic in your paintings--detailed enough to be interesting but not so much that they distract. Does that just come naturally to you, or did you work on it somehow? I struggle with this, for some reason!

Anna Alter said...

Hi Abigail,

Usually the outfits sort of evolve as the painting goes along. I definitely sketch out the shapes before I begin, but the colors and patterns suggest themselves... sometimes if I'm stumped I look at fabric patterns in catalogs or online for ideas.

-Anna

Christine Tripp said...

I don't do underpainting ss seeing your step by steps are wonderful!
What medium do you use (when I see the tree get lighter I'm not sure but it can't be watercolour) and what do you use to outline the characters?
Lovely results!!!!

Anna Alter said...

Hi Christine- Thanks! I'm using acrylic these days. The outlines are usually a combination of a darker shade of whatever color I've painted on the inside of the shape, and brown pigma micron pen.