It's that crazy time of month again--you know, some time between the 1st and the 31st! I'm working on August releases, mostly, but I've also snatched a few minutes here and there to sketch. Our son planted a couple of grape vines last year, and the one in the garden is loaded. He's proud of his grapes, and I thought that he would probably like a memento from his first grape harvest.
I sketched them in pencil first. That is a 3mm Knobby mechanical pencil above, along with an Aristo Click Eraser. I've always been a fine point girl--fine point pens, fine point pencils--fine point everything! A control issue? But I'm finding that switching to a thicker lead keeps me looser in the sketching phase so that I don't get caught up in the details before seeing the big picture. I'm working my way up to a 6mm. . . someday. . . maybe!
I usually use a warm gray Copic 0.3 Multiliner to trace over my pencil lines and clean up a pencil sketch before doing any marker work, but I was feeling adventurous this weekend. ;-) This is really rough. I was experimenting with my colored Copic Multiliners (all 0.3) and left it very sketchy--not much cleaner than my pencil piece underneath it. I wanted to color it with my markers, but I knew that these lines were too dark to be able to cover up easily. Necessity is still the Mother of Invention, however; I thought I would try photographing this rough colored line work and lightening it substantially in Photoshop Elements.
It worked! My sketchy colored lines are light enough here that I can pretty easily make them disappear as I render with marker. I lightened it enough so that I would have a white background rather than a gray one, and I printed it on X-Press It Blending card which easily goes through my Canon printer. Now I just need time to finish it.
On another note, Fall's coming quickly, which means that Copic Workshops will be in full swing again soon. If you are class shopping, THIS PAGE has a list of all open Workshops. We have August classes in Chicago, Dallas, and Edmonton, Alberta. My next class is in Las Vegas on September 23-24. Hope to meet some of you there!
