The Alchemist #4

The Alchemist

13"x19"

Watercolor on Sanford

Value Study

Color Study

Falcon 

This is another from the Alchemist series that I have been working on.  Above I have included the final painting, along with some images of the different steps that I  take on my way to arriving at a finished painting. The Falcon was painted separately and was later added to the finished painting using Photoshop. The value study shown above is when I will decide where the lights and darks will be within the painting and where the shadows will fall upon the figures. The color study, although much more abstract than the finished painting, helps provide me with some insight to how I want to lay in my washes and allows for experimentation with potential color palettes .

Tangiers painting

Tangiers

13"x19"

watercolor

This is the second painting in a series of images that I am working on, inspired by the book "The Alchemist".  In efforts to finish this piece for the "Big Characters" show that opened this past saturday at Seven Arts Gallery I had to cut a few corners in my process.  Lately I like to complete a value study as well as a color study before jumping into the painting, but these steps were left out due to limited time. The result was that I ended up with some things that were a bit more spontaneous than if I had gone through my usual preliminary steps. Of course there were also some things that I struggled with by not having a few essential details sorted out in the beginning, but that is par for the course.

Alchemist layout #3

Tangiers layout

This is the third drawing for a series of paintings I am working on. There remains quite few things I would like to refine and possibly add to this one, but here it is for now.

Alchemist roughs

Tangiers concept sketch

Chieftan sketch

Santiago the shepherd character study

The Chieftans

  Many years ago on a flight from Connecticut to Denver I had the chance to read The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, a beautiful story about a young Spanish Shepherd that embarks on a journey to unlock the significance of his recurring dreams. The story is filled with captivating imagery, beautiful landscapes, and magical characters in which have inspired me to create a series of illustrations. This post contains an assortment of rough drawings in which I hope will result in finished watercolor paintings. The scene containing multiple figures is furthest along in its development, while the others are tiny thumbnails taken from my moleskin sketch book.