Pages

Monday, August 07, 2006

Spots...


I love spot illustration. If I had my 'drothers, I think I would do almost nothing but. No compositional worries, no backgrounds.

I spent the last three days agonizing over a background for a book cover. The figures were all painted in. My practice tests had all gone great. Everything was masked and ready to go. Of course - it completely flopped. Consequent attempts to 'fix' it made things muddy and worse overall. I completely lose objectivity and can't even TELL where to go from here. I have such incredibly tight deadlines this month that I don't have time to be spending practicing and fixing for days (and definately not enough time to start completely over). Not my funnest weekend.

Still not happy with the resolution. Gave up and sent it off at 4:30 this morning and am waiting to hear what *they* think about about it. Hate this part. I can't even sleep anymore until I hear...

Ok- need to regroup and think positive thoughts about work finished and work yet to do. I have an insane schedule this month and must keep 'up' to deal with it all! Done venting.

I think I will go work on some more spots....

2 comments:

natural attrill said...

Hi Tara, sorry to hear your work is sounding very stressful.

Deadlines are great for motivation, but sometimes they can be just too much. I am working all day and evenings and weekends at the moment too, not stayed up till 4.30 am like you though!

Was it the actual application of paint that went wrong? or the colour didnt look right? I use a transparent acetate overlay that will take watercolour and gouache to experiment with colours when I am in the middle of painting an illustration and think somthings not quite right.

Good luck with it all!
Penny.

tlchang said...

Acetate overlays sound like a great idea for trying out color Penny.

In this particular case it was a textural technique that I was trying to use (granulating watercolor with wet color dropped into it and then with plastic wrap pressed into it for texture and pressed until it drys. It makes for terrific effects - when it works - which for some reason (possibly all the masking fluid on the figures?) it did not work at all on the actual artwork.