ACEO Lockkeeper Portrait
3-1/2″ by 2-1/2″
Rising Stonehenge Drawing Paper, White

I am going to combine three days worth of work on this post because the progress in the first day is obvious and the progress in the second day is less obvious.

I worked on Lockkeeper this day because the background still looked done! Praise the Lord! In fact, the background is so deeply saturated with color, that it reflects light, just like an oil painting. Now that’s what I like to see.

So I moved on to work on Lockkeeper.

The colors I used were Goldenrod, Orange Ochre and Terra Cotta. Each was applied in random order throughout the horse, building color layers. Pressure was light to medium throughout.

The work that went into the painting this day involved both Verithins and Prismacolors. The Verithins were used first to establish as deep and even a layer of color as possible while using up as little tooth as possible.

The colors were Orange Ochre, Spanish Orange, Crimson Red, Orange, Peacock Green, Black, Non-Photo Blue and Goldenrod. In the first pass, the colors were used in that order. In subsequent passes, they were not necessarily used in the stated order.

When I had done all I thought I could do with those, I switched to Prismacolors and continued work. Burnt Ochre, Orange and Black were the three colors I used.

For the most part, I used a medium to heavy pressure, really forcing color down into the tooth of the paper to fill up every last space.

The next day, I followed pretty much the same procedure.

Verithins in Goldenrod, Orange Ochre, Crimson Red, Ultramarine, Orange, Canary Yellow and White (the last two colors were highlight and/or burnishing colors). They were followed by Prismacolor Burnt Ochre applied in light to medium pressure.

When I finished for the day, I came to the very pleasant conclusion that this painting is almost finished. If I didn’t want to do much tweaking, I could even consider it finished.

But the face isn’t as polished as I would like it and the shadow along the jugular ridge isn’t quite deep enough. I’ll have to get out my magnifying glass and check, but I think Lockkeeper’s eyes are darker than what I’ve shown here, too.

I may still do some tweaking on this one, but it is currently an active auction on eBay.

©Copyright 2008 by Carrie Lewis. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Carrie Lewis’s website.