View Single Post
  #5  
Old 07-24-2008, 12:49 AM
KatherinePlumer's Avatar
KatherinePlumer KatherinePlumer is offline
Platinum
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Oak Run, California
Posts: 233
Default Re: Katherine's Contest Submission (Scrimshaw woo hoo!)

The first step for me when starting an image that I've transferred to the scrimmable surface is to "connect the dots" and make a real outline around the subjects so I can see what I'm doing. I've kept the bears deliberately lightly outlined right now since I don't want a real harsh line there (since they'll be fuzzy). The tree gets a more substantial outline. Oh, and I should clarify I'm not actually making any lines at all, this is all dots.



My plan of attack on this piece is to start with the foreground and work my way back. I won't even get the background drawn on there for a while yet. There might be other times I would do this backwards, or skip around from area to another, but I would hate to accidentally put the background in too dark (you can always make something darker, can't go the other way!) and since the values of the background will play off the values of the foreground, I'm going to put the foreground in first. Probably I will get the tree mostly done, then scrim the bears, then touch up some shadows on the tree. I do the same thing in my drawings and paintings, sometimes I work front to back and sometimes back to front, it just depends on the subject matter and how things overlap.

I always got in trouble in art classes for working this way. My teachers would say "you have to work on all areas of your paper/canvas/etching plate/whatever at once, don't finish one part and then start another!" Eh, I just don't function that way, though I will say I don't necessarily finish one part at a time, I just get it really close so I can see the rest of it should play off, and then I'll work back into it and do more shadow and stuff. If you have a style of working that works for you, don't let someone else tell you that it's wrong. Stick to your guns (or knives, or ivory, or whatever the case may be).