Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Colorful Mushrooms

I took this photo a month or so ago but just got around to painting it over the past week. I finally finished it yesterday and love the colors in it. These colors were in the photograph after tweaking the photo in my photo editing program but the original mushrooms were just your everyday blah beige.

The painting is colored pencil on stationery-type vellum. This vellum is paper (not calf-skin) but is beautifully translucent, acid-free and relatively heavy. Because of the translucency, I've backed the piece with a sheet of yellow artist's paper.

copyright Jan Gibson

Because of the paper's translucent quality and because it was scanned instead of being photographed, every little streak and speck shows up. In a way, I like that look but, it does look smoother and less streaky in real life.

The vellum is a little difficult to work on but I like the results so will probably use it again.


3 comments:

Paulette said...

These are perfect!
I love the purple shadowing.

Jan said...

Thank you so much, Paulette. I like these also but have decided to go back and push the shadows a bit more. I think they need a tad more drama.

Paulette said...

I hope you will post another picture.