Getting On a Little More...

It was a bit of a short day yesterday, because of the low light, but I managed to get a fair bit done. I started by putting in the tree, to establish the darkest tones, which really snaps everything into focus I think.

I got some children's, non-fiction, dinosaur books for undergrowth reference, and found these lovely cone thingies for the tree foot. I've put a lot of blue in their leaves to zing against the warm rocks.

Next I defined the rock shadows a little more, then started on the background dinosaurs: you have to work down from the top as much as possible, to prevent smudging everything with your arm - infuriating, but I've done it many a time. By the way, for my best smudging anecdote of all time, see Cats and Pastels Don't Mix (yes, I can see you're ahead of me...)

I did the stegosauruses first. I'm pleased with how the pink works against the blue and yellowy green. The colours of all the dinos were pre-set, because I did all the other spreads in the summer.

Once they were in, I zapped up the water and reflections a bit. Then I popped in the Elasmosaurus's head:


At which point, it started to get dark. I got my original Hadrosaur artwork out and tacked it to the board for reference, ready for tomorrow.


I was unable to resist continuing a little longer, filling in the basic Hadrosaur colours by the light of my daylight spots but, though they're better than nothing, it's still impossible to properly gauge colour, so I left it.