Robot Step-by-Step II

Hey again, everyone, welcome to part two! I decided that it would be crazy to put all the pictures I have of the process in one post, so splitting it up seemed like the smart move. If you came here before Step I, here's a link to that. It's probably best to do things in chronological order.

Step Four: Working into the layers:

Shading the Ground:

 Here I've added more Burnt Sienna to the landscape, especially in the foreground. It's undiluted, so the colour is stronger, and in the hills behind, I've worked in a mix of Burnt Sienna and Yellow Ochre wet-into-wet, and then added a little Titanium White to that mix and worked that wet-into-wet as well.





More after the jump

Texturing the Ground

 You can see in the foreground I've added dark tones and light tones: the dark went in first, pretty much at random. It's a dark grey made by adding a little Ultramarine Blue to Burnt Sienna; the light tone is a mix of Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre and Titanium White, used to highlight around the dark patches to give them the impression of 3D

 Shading the robot:


This layer is essentially just dilute Ultramarine Blue, applied wherever it seemed like a good idea to have a shade. If I'm imagining a light source without much other obvious sources in the picture, I tend to go for a light source from the left. No particular reason.

 Working on the Dress:

The establishing layer I put down at first was dilute Emerald Green, so here I put in undilute Emerald green. It forms the midtone of the area, so I also add a little Ultramarine Blue to be the shade, and a little Lemon Yellow + Titanium White for the highlights.

 Working on the Dress II:


I work all the colours while still wet - I think it's best for smooth shades in the long folds of fabric, especially matte fabrics.

 And here's a close up of the dress so you can see what I'm getting at.

Step Five: Even more Shading 

 I've enlarged this one so you can get a good look at the greater amount of shading in here. Since I tend to work from light to dark (a legacy of my formative experience in watercolours), this is an indicator that I'm nearly done. The woman's flesh is painted with a mix of Yellow Ochre, Titanium White, and just a touch of Alizarin Crimson, then with a tiny bit of Ultramarine for the shade.
The robot has been shaded, not with black, but with a dark purple made by mixing roughly equal quantities of Ultramarine Blue and Alizarin Crimson. For the dark shades on the dress, a little of that purple mix was used, just watered a little so that I could feather it out.

 In this image, you can see I tidied p the robot's head, and also a few spots of the sky that hadn.t quite been covered properly last time round. I added a few more white highlights to pick out the studs, and on the head as well. Finally, after cleaning up the speech bubble with a few coats of Lemon Yellow mixed with Titanium White, I went round it and the words with neat Payne's Grey. That was a bit of a strain! I actually very rarely use Payne's Grey, or black (apparently it's bad form), but in this case it was useful.

Step Six: One Last Thing:

And here we have what I'm calling (for now) the finished version. I added some highlights in pale yellow from the robot's head, and worked into the head a little with pure Yellow Ochre to give the filament a bit of contrast.

I think I've learned a lot about painting in Acrylics from doing this, mostly in terms of how they respond to the brushes, and in a bit of actual painting theory. I learned that I like the way contrast looks, and a little randomness in the landscape doesn't hurt.