Friday, June 22, 2018 at 02:37AM Just finished my latest piece from the Vanitas series I have been working on for a while. This is #14, done all in pastel on Arches board. 18" x 12". Initially I was planning on doing this in graphite but I changed my mind after realizing that this composition really could use strong chromatic contrast to enhance the dramatic effect. I think it worked out well.
Sunday, January 21, 2018 at 04:28PM I am taking a little break from Vanitas 12 I started last year. Instead, I have been working on a small drawing: Vanitas 13. Today I finalized my composition. I am going to add a cherry underneath this drawing. The final dimension of this piece is going to be 10" x 9".
Saturday, October 14, 2017 at 12:31AM I started a new piece: Vanitas 12 a few days ago. This is going to be another graphite drawing on Bristol board. The subject is my model McLane and an empty shell of cicada. I collected a dozen cicada shells back in Japan this summer. They were generally larger than their American counterparts and their color is darker and really shiny. Very beautiful, so I decided to use them for my art work. I collaged 3 different images together in Photoshop to create this composition. So far I've finished general shading with H pencils and am ready to move on to darker leads.
Friday, July 28, 2017 at 11:20PM Well, finally it's done. I am happy about the way this piece looks. I did not need to do any compositing of multiple photos for the best composition like I had done for several other drawings. This is pretty much how the image was captured in camera. The only artistic liberty I used were streaky texture of the background to the right and the intentional flatness of the hair. I feel those little manipulations added an interesting play to the perception of space and increased an emotional impact.
Tuesday, July 25, 2017 at 01:52PM The hair and the top 1/2 of the fabric have been rendered. Now I can do the rest of the fabric, make some minor adjustments and this piece will be done.
