"just try and stay out of my way. Just try my pretty."

I've been working on the shoe strings and eyelets.  Using 10% to 90% cool greys. I think they are taking me longer than the reds of the shoes.

"Just try and stay out of my way. Just try my pretty."

So as you can see I've decided to make the legs look decisively green. Thanks John for the advice. They may have to go a little lighter but I'm waiting to see.  I've used Dark Green, Celadon Green and Jade Green. The Red in the shoes have a few more layers too. Some of the lightest areas have Blush Pink and everything has Scarlet Lake.  The Red in the shoes will need a little more work but I need to get the rubber parts of the shoes in first to get my values right.  The rubber parts on the left shoe has only a layer of 30% to 90% cool greys and some areas the paper white.

"Just try and stay out of my way. Just try my pretty."

Now you can see the beginnings of the transformation to red with the tuscan Red.

"Just try and stay out of my way. Just try my pretty."

So the local art gallery http://www.hotshopsartcenter.com/ is having a theme show in December, "Wizard of Oz" So this is my interpretation. First I'd like to thank an old high school friend for the converse sneakers inspiration.  My idea is that the Wicked Witch actually got the Ruby slippers.  Once on they take the personality of the wearer.  It's on watercolor paper with a wash of sap green and black.  The witches colors and remembering she was melted by the water.  Using dark green Prisma colored pencil I worked all the dark shadow areas of the shoes. Yes, they will turn red soon!

POW/USA Bike

Still working on it.  I have the black flag almost done.  It needs a little more work but I have to get some of things around it done so I can figure out the values I need.

POW/MIA

See I told you the flag would turn red! Here you see the leather seat back and the flag with all the layers of color in them.  Of course when all is said and done things will be adjusted here and there.  I can't wait for the "purple" POW/MIA flag to turn black.  In the next post I hope to show some samples of the layers it takes for some of these final colors.  I believe there are 6 to 8 layers of different reds in the stripes on the flag and as many blues in the field of stars.

POW/USA Bike

So I have been very diligent about working the undertones all over this time.  I usually fully work an area and then move on because I'm impatient to see how it will look.  It looks a mess right now since nothing is the color it should be.  It did help because I noticed a compositional problem.  The POW flag edge is too parallel to the bag behind it and will get lost together.  I've extended it out past a bit in the drawing but it may need to be moved out just a bit more. Next the fun part.  USA flag will turn red, white and blue and POW flag will turn black along with everything else