This is a good time to experiment. The worries of the pandemic require escapism. Make each day count. There’s nothing like a good creative challenge. And it’s important to try new techniques and materials to travel beyond one’s safety zone. Why not use a reference that inspires and makes you happy? The reference photo for“Twinkle Toes” was taken by me when my grandson was about 6 months old. His mom had just given him a bath, wrapped him up in his little hooded towel and placed him on the bed. The light was streaming in from a huge victorian window.
Faber Castell Polychromos are oil based colored pencils with great lightfast ratings. On top of that, they are easy to lift and erase. The reference photo was striking because of the high contrast light to shadow. I planned to leave areas of clean exposed paper for the brightest white, so Polychromos would be easy to lift off the paper where necessary and erase where smudging occurred. I’d used them before in my animal art. This would be my first attempt at human baby skin.
I didn’t have a large stock of this brand of pencils, but had enough to work within a limited palette. It was a challenge to create skin tones in varying degrees of light and shadow, using cool grays, blue, pink, reds, browns and warm grays, while using the same colors to create the towel. The white dots-little loops of terry cloth- were achieved using frisket ( a low tack adhesive on clear plastic) to lift pigment.
The substrate was also a challenge. My go-to rag 4ply mat board stock was used up, but I had plenty of Fabiano Artistico 140# watercolor paper on hand. The paper is beautiful, but doesn’t have the tooth of the mat board, so there are only so many layers of pencil it will accept. The result of the pencil on this smooth surface, coupled with the patchy way Polychromos layered, was spotty. (**see note) All of the above forced me to accept that what at first might be considered a limitation, could in the end be a new technique. So I worked for hours and hours, understanding that this was a self imposed workshop piece. Good or bad, the final result was not the point of the experiment. By the way, thank goodness for books on audio because building shadow took many go-backs, especially on the face where one small alteration could throw likeness off. Polychromos may lift and erase easily, but THEY SMUDGE. I used a clean sheet of paper under my pencil hand.
*Note: The spottiness I mention in regards to layering Polychromos on w/c paper may be due to user “error.” I initially applied them the same way I would apply wax based pencils, using scrumbling (tight little swirly circles) and cross hatch strokes. As I went along, I found that quick, lightly repeated lines that followed the contour achieved a smoother affect. This takes patience. Again, thank goodness for audio books!