Year's Dawn WIP

It's been a while since I last used coloured pencil, I do like the effect of having coloured line art, it nicely sits between realistic and obviously cartoony? I guess. Using pencil rather than pen also just pushes it a little further towards realistic, it's nearly unnoticeable in the final painting but helps me keep track of where things are, also I can get a larger range of colours with pencil than pen.

I think I'll use this technique more often.

I had a lot of fun doing the leaves in the background....I completely went about this the wrong way though, in stating off on the background I added more detail than it needed.

However by starting on the lightest part of the painting I was also laying down a marker of how dark the rest of it should be...without that guide I think I would have made everything too dark.

The yellow is masking fluid, preventing watercolour ending up where I want snow to be on the trees.

I really made these trees too detailed for the distance, I later smooth them out a bit. I need to get into the habit of painting the most important bits first so I remember to make the non-focal points less detailed. It would both make my paintings quicker and is a stylistic choice I prefer.

I made a mistake with her skin and antlers, they're the only place I use Van Dyke Brown and it stands out really badly. I knew it would probably be a mistake but I just ignored how badly it would fit.

I was able to remove most of it, and instead there was just a slight Van Dyke Brown hint to the skin and antlers which I managed to overlay enough of the other colours onto it didn't stand out too much.

I really like the green on her dress. I don't often have a colour I only have pure without mixing it in the background somewhere too but it does work well to be eye catching.

Another big problem with starting in the background was I was running out of interest in the painting by the time I came to the foreground Yew tree. This was one of the points where I did want attention on it and I had to fight not to rush it.

Nearly finished, I'll post up the finished version later, it needs scanned. Just a little work on her face and the Snowdrops to go.

This painting's been a bit of a slog. I wanted to do something I could make into a Christmas/Solstice card but to be honest I just wasn't that interested in the idea and by the time I started painting it it was already too late to make cards out of in time for Christmas anyway, ah well, next year.

I also really need to just avoid doing paintings I need to render the whole background for, I don't like doing backgrounds and hand painting distant tree bark isn't fun for me and doesn't help the over all look.

So...lessons to try to learn, do seasonal paintings half a year in advance and stop trying to make backgrounds perfect.