Remember how we were talking about telling yourself a fairy tale in which you decide what the ending should be? I wrote one for the Artfest book of ATCs I'm working on. I decided to spread the love over seven ATCs, so if you stick around you'll be able to read the whole story. It starts like this:
"... seemed to what?! Finish the sentence!"No. Not gonna. Not 'til tomorrow, anyhow.
Because the claw had to be baby-sized for this ATC, I sanded down a bread bag clip to the bare essentials, painted an undercoat of black, then painted two or three colors over that. Tricky, but not impossible.
The paintover method I learned from Lisa Bebi is both fun and challenging, especially when painting skin tones on a person of color. If this were a white baby, I could probably get away with either or both of these:
But, um, the paint companies don't make "African American flesh"-- good God, what a horrible thought. Makes me think of Strange Fruit -- so I use these colors:
From one or two colors, to eight to ten, depending. Can't just add soft white to burnt umber to get the color I want. Otherwise the skin looks flat, like I used wall paint or something. Remember my first attempts?
And if you're trying to paint a chocolate-skinned person, for example, the person comes out looking like they're wearing blackface. Whoops.
So this little pumpkin's skin is the result of experimenting on another, larger photo I used on the next ATC. Bwahahaha... now you have to come back to find out more.
3 comments:
Well, alrighty then. I'll be baaack. And the skintone on the little one looks lovely!
NFW - the Word Verification is
harixime
you are such a tease. tell us that ending!
@ Laurel: Thank you so much! More to come.
@Aimee: Nope. Not gonna! And the ending doesn't happen for another *six* ATCs! Bwahahaha...
See you tomorrow!
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