Eastern Totem Box
It's been a while, hasn't it? This is the big, big thing I was working on up through last month.
The top. The whole thing measured roughly 11 x 14 x 9.
This one was challenging for a number of reasons; combining more than one animal in a design always presents an interesting hurdle. I'm very proud of the animals themselves, which came out a nice balance of stylized and realistic, while still making the best use of the space.
Also, the size of the thing itself made fading the background problematic. I don't use an airbrush, since I don't like the dry look they give to everything. This meant blending the background by hand in multiple layers. Not easy on a surface that big -- the open time for acrylic paint is ten minutes at best, and usually less than half that. Even with an extender, it was still a challenge to blend the whole surface before it dried too much to work.
The curly tendril design for the front and back had to be altered slightly to accomodate the hardware without overlap.
By now you are probably noticing that my usual metallics are not present in this piece. Once I'd finished the top, I decided that adding any metallics at all would detract from the clean lines. I settled for putting a nice clean outline around everything to tidy it up, and it looks quite smart that way. I also used a nice satin varnish instead of a hard gloss, and I think it lends a kind of dignity to it.
Since this box was intended to see use, I kept the bottom very simple. I really like the spiraling flower buds, though.
And now the fun stuff. That's a closeup of the tiger. Her color is built up from a base coat of cream, with layers of thin color applied over it: first a rich golden ochre, then several layers of a cinnamony orange, and last, a sharp russet verging on red. The dark brown stripes were added, white highlights picked out here and there on the face, and black accents added on the face, feet, and tail.
The wolf presented a unique problem. Wolves' natural coloration is not nearly as vivid as the tiger's, and unless I did some fancy thinking, the brilliant black and amber was going to overwhelm him completely.
I went as true to real wolf coloring as I could get and still adhere to the stylization of the design. His color is layer after layer of warm greys and soft browns applied over the same cream base I used for the tiger. When I'd finished that, I went back in with some of the same russet and applied ruddy patches to the wolf's fur in all the places where real wolves have such patches. He is still more subtle than the tiger, but I think he has a lot of dignity, and he definitely holds his own.
The flowers were the most fun to draw -- you can stylize water lilies a lot without making them unrecognizable, so I felt free to play. Painting them, though, was another story -- even the outlines are shaded! It was incredibly time-consuming. As in, I had time to watch most of the last two seasons of Babylon 5 and all of the first season of Eureka while painting on this thing.
Still:
I'm happy with the finished product. This one fought me very, very hard, but it was a wonderful challenge.
I realized just now that I haven't posted pictures of any of the other wolf auction boxes, nor have I posted pictures of the commission just before this one, or of the tee-shirt art for Conestoga 11 that I finished, or of the boxes I'm going to be selling there, or. . . .
So, you can expect to see a lot more of this stuff in the immediate future. I'm not taking commissions right now, since I'm gearing up for the art show in July, but I still have a lot of stuff to share with you.
The top. The whole thing measured roughly 11 x 14 x 9.
This one was challenging for a number of reasons; combining more than one animal in a design always presents an interesting hurdle. I'm very proud of the animals themselves, which came out a nice balance of stylized and realistic, while still making the best use of the space.
Also, the size of the thing itself made fading the background problematic. I don't use an airbrush, since I don't like the dry look they give to everything. This meant blending the background by hand in multiple layers. Not easy on a surface that big -- the open time for acrylic paint is ten minutes at best, and usually less than half that. Even with an extender, it was still a challenge to blend the whole surface before it dried too much to work.
The curly tendril design for the front and back had to be altered slightly to accomodate the hardware without overlap.
By now you are probably noticing that my usual metallics are not present in this piece. Once I'd finished the top, I decided that adding any metallics at all would detract from the clean lines. I settled for putting a nice clean outline around everything to tidy it up, and it looks quite smart that way. I also used a nice satin varnish instead of a hard gloss, and I think it lends a kind of dignity to it.
Since this box was intended to see use, I kept the bottom very simple. I really like the spiraling flower buds, though.
And now the fun stuff. That's a closeup of the tiger. Her color is built up from a base coat of cream, with layers of thin color applied over it: first a rich golden ochre, then several layers of a cinnamony orange, and last, a sharp russet verging on red. The dark brown stripes were added, white highlights picked out here and there on the face, and black accents added on the face, feet, and tail.
The wolf presented a unique problem. Wolves' natural coloration is not nearly as vivid as the tiger's, and unless I did some fancy thinking, the brilliant black and amber was going to overwhelm him completely.
I went as true to real wolf coloring as I could get and still adhere to the stylization of the design. His color is layer after layer of warm greys and soft browns applied over the same cream base I used for the tiger. When I'd finished that, I went back in with some of the same russet and applied ruddy patches to the wolf's fur in all the places where real wolves have such patches. He is still more subtle than the tiger, but I think he has a lot of dignity, and he definitely holds his own.
The flowers were the most fun to draw -- you can stylize water lilies a lot without making them unrecognizable, so I felt free to play. Painting them, though, was another story -- even the outlines are shaded! It was incredibly time-consuming. As in, I had time to watch most of the last two seasons of Babylon 5 and all of the first season of Eureka while painting on this thing.
Still:
I'm happy with the finished product. This one fought me very, very hard, but it was a wonderful challenge.
I realized just now that I haven't posted pictures of any of the other wolf auction boxes, nor have I posted pictures of the commission just before this one, or of the tee-shirt art for Conestoga 11 that I finished, or of the boxes I'm going to be selling there, or. . . .
So, you can expect to see a lot more of this stuff in the immediate future. I'm not taking commissions right now, since I'm gearing up for the art show in July, but I still have a lot of stuff to share with you.