Dr. Ferretstein in glorious color

Ah, finally I have have some finished pieces in color to share with you from the curious world of Dr. Ferretstein! I will post, as I have done, the color studies and a few various stages of painting so you can see how the work looks in progress. Hopefully it will help some budding artists out there and encourage them. Sometimes paintings have to endure an ugly period before they can be finished. I would be happy to go on about this, but I will let the artwork and photos of it do all of the explaining here.

I would like to share with you, the creation of the "Vitruvian Ferret"

First I lightly gesso an illustration board. Then I print out the sketch I did really big and transfer it onto the primed board. Then, I begin painting some darker details with a really watery acrylic paint, all the while trying to keep in mind that this is supposed to look like its done in ink and the paper is aged. For the text I used a crowquill pen dipped in the same watery acrylic.

For the most part, the illustration is finished. It is important to note that I have chosen to sort of work in reverse. What I mean by that is that I do all of the stuff first that would actually be ink sitting on the surface of paper, right? Then my plan is to scumble in a translucent color on top that makes it look like its on aged paper.

Oops! better have my ferret, Icarus, inspect my work first!

Ok, next step is to mask off the edges we do not want paint on. Because of the irregular border I gently trim my masking tape to fit. Note: I really do keep referencing my color study throughout the creation of a painting.

See here, the color is applied. I chose oil paint because of its permanence and brilliance. Besides, if I do something I don't like I just wipe it right off and its like it never happened; so I can control how much yellow and brown I want in it very easily. It's a messy business, but you can see why I masked off the edges now.

Tape removed, and done!

Photographed by Alexander Patho and the digital file also precisely color corrected.

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In my next post I will show you Dr. Ferretstein in a diving bell suit. I know, right! What on Earth could be cuter than a little ferret scientist in a diving bell?

But you will have to be patient my friends, the blog spot is giving me a bunch of errors at the moment.