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.

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.