More Work on the Icarus Board

After my first tries with the Icarus board I let my interest lapse for a while. I did try again starting another project back in March of last year. This time I used Colourfix paper. I sketched my composition and printed it to a sheet of 16 x 13 white Colourfix.


I got as far as applying and blending skin tone colors with Neocolor crayons. I thought it was much more successful this time.



As happy as I was with this experiment for some reason I didn't continue working on it for a long time. It was only very recently, after seeing the latest Icarus board tutorials on Ester Roi's site that I got fired up again to continue.



Looking at some of the more recent tutorials I see that it is possible just to use pencils to lay the wax down thick enough, but I found it easier here to lay down initial coats with the Neocolor crayons and then blend color with the pencils. I've been using color shapers to blend and move the wax around on the paper.
 


I've been using a hodgepodge of icarus board techniques, applying wax crayons and pencils on the hottest settings, separately or layered together, blending them together on the warm area, layering the pencil on top on the cool zone, using Verithins for details and defining edges on cool and warm areas. I'm still getting familiar with the effects of the different techniques, so I'm sure that once I get more experience I'll be a little more methodical in how I use the board.

Using the Icarus Board

I received an Icarus board as a Christmas present the year before last. I really wanted one because I knew of the possibilities that opened up when applying heat to colored pencils and wax crayons. I am lucky enough to belong to the same local CPSA chapter that Ester Roi belongs to. Ester is the inventor of the Icarus board. So I have been privileged to see first hand some of the incredibly beautiful art that she has created with the board. Once I had my own board I did find it a little intimidating and not having a proper place to use it, I'm sorry to say that after the initial flurry of experimenting on it, it kind of ended up on a back burner.

The photo shows my first try, on one of the sheets of paper that came with the board. I'm not sure what type of paper this was, but it could have been Stonehenge or some other kind of 2-ply bristol type paper with a nice vellum finish. I did a contour sketch, printed the outline to the paper and began to apply layers of colors with my usual assortment of Prismacolor pinks, peaches and yellow pencils to build up skin tones the way I usually do. I figured when I had enough layers I could shift over to the heated side of the board and blend everything together. This didn't really work.



I realized pretty soon that the pencils by themselves did not deposit enough wax to melt and move around freely like paint, at least not the way I applied them. Back around this time Ester had put the first few tutorials on how to use the board up on her website. This is where I should have started, so I belatedly went over to take a look and got a few clues on what to try. I needed to get myself a set of neocolors before going any further.

When I finally had my new supplies in hand I came back to this piece and experimented a bit. I applied the some bright blues and pinks neocolors to the background and saw how much more easily these laid down the wax and melted together. I applied a little black to the hair and played around trying to add highlights, but when I got to the face the I just couldn't figure out how to apply the flesh toned neocolors without obliterating the subtle shadows and highlights I had already started with the pencils. I chickened out and told myself that I would just come back to it when I had a better idea of what to do.


It seemed easier to just start fresh, so I next tried this.

This time I drew on a 15 x 11 inch piece of black Arches cover paper. This is a heavy paper with a pronounced texture. I used just the neocolor crayons to apply color to the face and hair. I was able to blend the colors well enough with the heated board but needed a lot of wax application to cover up the texture of the paper. It has an interesting look letting the texture show through as in the right side background,but it's not the look I wanted. I concluded that this paper was not the best for a smooth look. The Icarus board makes it possible to cover the texture completely but it's a lot easier to choose another type of paper instead of fighting the texture on this one.

Transcendent Finished

I actually finished this a few months ago, but neglected to post about it. I've neglected to post anything lately, so I have a little catching up to do.



This piece is about 18 x 12 inches, colored pencil on Canson Mi-Tientes. It went a lot faster than usual and since I pretty much kept to the original sketch, I didn't abuse the paper too much. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Not Forgotten

Here's a look at this oldie. I've picked up the pace recently with some work to the sweater area. I worked slowly over a long period on the foliage on the right. It was pretty tedious, but I'm liking how it looks. As I continued to work on the side area I realized that I should probably switch back to the center of the paper otherwise I would have to reach over the finished edge to access the center. So its back to red, red and more red.
 

Finished

The last section, work on the leather jacket is done. It took a lot of layering and different colors to get the look of leather I wanted. It was even more time consuming than usual because I couldn't just layer even coats of different colors on top of one another. To get the textured look of leather I had to add the different colors in scrumbling lines and small dots of color.


This is how it looked after laying out some basic colors while I tried to block out the areas of shadow and light.


After many more colors and lots of scribbling the colors and textures were solid enough to sign it and consider it done.

In this close up the grain of the paper is very aparent, but blots of colors can also be seen on the leather jacket as opposed to the smoother colors on the shirt. I did my best to cover the yellow of the paper so as to make the color of the jacket a cool brown with blueish highlights.

My final thoughts on this project are, love the paper and will definitely use it again. Small projects are nice, I actually finish them. Need to stop drawing television characters and draw something I can enter in a show.

Another Portrait

I couldn't resist starting another portrait (yes I know!). I wanted to work on Canson Mi Tientes again, so I used an 18 x 12 sheet from a Canson Pad I had. Fortunately for me at 12 inches wide it's small enough to put through my large format Epson printer. So I was able to print the contour lines directly to the paper.



I actually printed the lines twice when I realized the first try was too faint and some of my reference lines were not visible. I tried again printing it darker and most of the lines showed up. The double printing is what gives the vibrating effect in some places :-)








I'm off to a fast start!

One Jacket Done

Here is my latest work on this piece. I guess the most interesting thing while working on the jacket was trying to get the zippers on the pockets and front to look metallic. The color I found most useful was Prismacolor's Bronze. I used it in the darker areas and its brownish, greenish, yellowish tones seemed to help to convey the idea of the shadows in the gold colored metal.

There are darker colors I used like Sepia in the darkest lines and some dark browns sparingly. Some of the other colors were Burnt Sienna and Sand, both Prisma's, for the golden glints. For highlights, my favorite bright, Luminance Buff Titanium and small touches of pure white.



There's also some use of Luminance's Olive Brown 10% and Raw Umber 10% on the left side zipper pull. I tried the stronger Olive Brown 50% in the darks here but I think this went a little too much into the greens for my taste.

I do love that Luminance has a few sets of pencil hues in graduated tints, Brown Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Olive Brown, Raw Umber Burnt Ochre and Sepia. All these colors come in full strength, 50% and 10%. Some of them have been very useful to me for creating subtle changes in skintones.