Monochromes And Glazing With Color

Thursday means it's another time for some throwback as well as going back from my journey in arts from the previous months. This time it's all about creating works in black and white, and a bonus colorized piece coming from monochromatic beginnings! I enjoy working in any kind of art mediums and each one helped me improve on the basics as I go along with practice.

Monochromes from Charcoal and Airbrushing: Roses and a Jaguar

First Rose

Ever since I stumbled with a piece of charcoal pencil from my old cabinet, it made me curious on how to use it properly and that resulted from my first serious attempt in producing a realistic result. It was hard at first, but that prompted me to do better since it gave me a motivation and expectations with the kind of results that I can create. Our beginnings will never be perfect, but that's a stepping stone for us to move forward and improve along the way.

Charcoal is one of my favorite mediums to work with, and for a good reason. It's very easy to correct mistakes especially if you are using the right materials. These materials are also the cheapest that you can possibly start with, and you can finish works quickly since you are not dealing with color. Working with black and white means that it will teach us properly to see the correct values and shading. Most people would say that colors are beautiful in any artwork which I agree, but without proper values those colors will look flat if realistic results are desired.

For the rose above, it made me focused on working with proper values and shading. I was intimidated with the complexity of the shading and there's the self-talk that tells me, " this is going to be hard, don't do this". Instead of listening to that negative mind, my hands moved instead and slowly but surely filling out any details and values until it looks right. At first, everything looks very dull due to the "ugly stages" of any artwork. We must be patient and finish what we started to get the results we want. It's like filling pieces of puzzle which starts our from a tiny part, until everything is put into place.

Acrylic and Airbrush Rose

Next, I tried to attempt the black and white version of another rose using acrylics. To begin with, I used airbrush to fill the background and simulate that bokeh effect which is one of my favorites in any photo or artwork. Once the background is all good, I started sketching out the rose using a white charcoal pencil in the canvas. It's easy to erase the charcoal in case there's undesired lines, and it will be easier when starting to paint with acrylic.

I saw from different tutorials that some painters use the Grisaille method which often starts with the black and white base to establish the values, then they will glaze over it. I will talk about it in a few moments.

Wire-y Jaguar Lol

Now, this is probably the greatest challenge for me for charcoal, since it's all about doing fur! Fur is hard to do especially for me who doesn't have much experience in doing it, and this is my chance to get out of that comfort zone. I decided to do fur first in charcoal beacause I know mistakes will be corrected easily, and color is out of the way. To be honest, the struggle of simulating realistic fur for me is following the correct direction of a patch of it. After seeing the results, I am feeling cringed by the wire-y fur haha. It's like they were forced to be placed in those locations. But I like the way the eyes, ears, and the black spots looked for me.

Glazing "Rose From the Depths"

Now, this is the same rose that I did from the acrylic and airbrushing from monochrome above. Once the values and shading are in place, it's easy to put colors in place by glazing. What I did to put the glaze of color is by mixing more water in the acrylic to thin it down, then slowly putting the color in the proper place. For this only blue, red, and some aqua green were mixed in. If the initial part of this took hours to finish, this step only took around 30 mins or so.

I would title this one as " Rose From the Depths" as it looks like the rose is floating in the ocean or galaxy, whatever suits or imagination haha.

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Which one do you like the most for these 4 pieces? Do you have any suggestions or ideas? Thank you for reading and stopping by!

For my recent works, try to navigate through the previous parts here:

Part 1: It's Never Too Late to Learn Something New (Start of Journey)

Part 2: I Was Encouraged to Just Keep Going (Colored Pencils and Inktober)

Part 3: Taking the Next Step, While Dealing with Memories and Loss(Acrylics)

Part 4: Spreading Colors Through Spray and Aerosol(Airbrushing)

Part 5: Blending Different Hues With Oil Pastels

Part 6: Artback Thursday: Time for Some Anime!

Part 7: Hilarious Editing: The Elemental Cattos!

Part 8: Photo Editing and Nature Art: Kaleidoscopes and Mirror Patterns

Part 9: Blue-Themed Throwback!

Part 10: Monochromes And Glazing With Color

[#37] November 4, 2021