Dr. Ferretstein and the diving bell

Hello friends! Blogger is now cooperating and so I can show you the diving bell illustration. You will have to forgive the absence of a formal color corrected image at the end, it is being photographed at this very moment.

So, let us start at the beginning and with the sketch.

It was not as easy as you would think, designing a diving bell suit for an average sized ferret; all while still maintaining a distinctly victorian-steam punk feel. I tried to also imagine all he would need for air flow, weighted boots, etc. There is a little bellows type of thing on his front that could serve to circulate the air, and a propulsion system on his back. Ah, come on, you know he would need it, those tiny little legs couldn't get him anywhere fast. ;o)

After the folks at the Gamers Realm gave me a thumbs up on this sketch I moved on to color studies. After creating 7 versions all with different color schemes, this is the one they liked best:

After that was all settled I primed a hot press illustration board with gesso, transferred my sketch down at the size I wanted to paint it, and got started with the underpainting right away.

This stage seen above was done with Vandyke Brown acrylic paint. Mostly I hate using acrylic, never could master the medium; but that seems to be the way doesn't it? It seems that artists who primarily use oil don't like to use acrylic much and vice versa. It's not a snobbery thing, I assure you, it's just a matter of being used to how this or that medium behaves.

Now, in the stage below you will see that I have begun to apply another layer to the underpainting stage using Burnt Sienna oil paint. Ahhh, speed gained and back in my comfort zone.

this is what it looked like with all of the underpainting done. Why Burnt Sienna for the underpainting and not some other color? Well I learned in college how to use oil paint and my instructor said it was the best and its really hard to paint in layers like I do if you use much else. I tried other stuff, and you know so far she is right. Other colors don't usually work out so well.

Here is where it starts to really get interesting as I add other colors. I will list a bunch all together so you can see the progress. Not much I can say other than: yep, it's progress.

ok, so there is most of the progress. Now for the finishing touches like making sure the convex glass is looking more like glass:

done!

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next post: The Group Painting. 10 of the characters in the Dr. Ferretstein project have been painted in color, all together in a line-up style showing height!

likely I will also have the nice color corrected image of this piece to show you as well.

I feel I must reiterate, at this time, that these images are copyrighted. So nobody better borrow any of these images for their own purposes, seriously... I mean it.