@theprairiefox Thank you 🙂 I totally agree that I need to ground the woman in blue. That’s an update I haven’t made yet but am going to ASAP. Her coat has a large collar so I’m thinking of making her actual coat a darker blue. I really like what you said about her hat and shadows creating an air of mystery, that made me happy because that was totally my intention.
With the woman in front (and the other woman) I purposefully covered her eyes with shadow because (and this might be a bit of an abstract idea) I always see eyes as a personality trait. I wanted to avoid giving these ladies too much personality because my intention is that they’re less of a character and more of an element to the overall atmosphere of the illustration. Unfortunately, I can’t cover her up without it being an off looking shadow lol. I’ve added more to the illustration including deepening that shadow that I’ve attached at the bottom of this post. I’m also thinking of turning that bizarre biscotti into another cup of coffee haha.
@StudioLooong Thank you! The advice about hot pressed paper is very much appreciated and i will definitely pick some up. I do have two mediums at home that I use in my canvas paintings (I paint abstract work on canvas primarily) and that is gel medium and gloss medium & varnish. I also have satin varnish that I prefer over gloss to finish my paintings so maybe I can mix a little satin varnish with the paint (I’m out of my gloss medium and varnish). I wonder how well that might work.
@KathrynAdebayo
I should have mentioned earlier that the skin tone I’m going for here is gray. That’s done purposefully but I see what you mean about the shadows being tooo gray. So, I used black for shadows for the ladies. But I used burnt umber and a dark red for the shadows on the curtains and burnt umber and deep violet for the shadows on the green clothing. Perhaps I should have stuck with the same mixture for each shadow. Thank you so much for the suggestions 🙂 Perhaps I could scan it into photoshop as well and do some retouches
I did the line work in pencil, outlined it and made changes to the composition on my iPad in Procreate and then turned the lines into a vector file and printed it out. I then used carbon paper to transfer it to the watercolor paper, this way I can keep experimenting with the coloring without having to keep sketching out the line work over and over again.
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