Kiiro the Gecko

Kiiro the Gecko
10.5" x 6"
Coloured Pencil on Paper

It feels good to be back to "my medium".

Some time back I made a decision not to draw from other people's photos unless it was a commissioned piece. However, when I saw Colored Pencil Magazine was using this image for their monthly contest, I could not resist. He is just so beautiful! Sally Ford, the photographer has graciously given full permissions to use her image.

I spent ALL DAY Sunday working on this image. I started around 9ish in the morning and worked on it until 11ish at night. I forgot to take W.I.P. photos, but this is what it looked like at the end of the day:

Work in Progress
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Photo by Ana Tirolese, taken with iPhone

My hand was pretty achy by the end of the day. I have not worked that long in years. 

I let my hand rest all day Monday and then worked on it Tuesday evening.  At this point I really wanted to complete the piece and impatience won over better judgement. I should have worked slower and more meticulously to achieve a smoother and more realistic end result. I used Koh-I-Noor's Woodless Pencils which are way too waxy for my liking. I don't normally use them for detailed work (more for backgrounds that I can smudge) but I needed greens they offered and Prismacolor was lacking. I should have stuck to Prismacolor and worked a few more layers.

These days I do not used printed references when I can view them on my HP Touchpad tablet. However, I had printed out the image on plain paper because my HP Touchpad was acting up and needed a hard reboot, which I could not remember how to do (and for some reason forgot that I could have Googled it). I didn't have photographic paper so I just printed the reference on generic printer paper. Some of the fine detail was missing in the printed version. (My son showed me how to hard boot my tablet and it is working now.) I should have waited. I could have done a better job with the gecko's skin if I had been viewing it on the tablet.

I really enjoy using the tablet for holding my reference photos. Not only is it environmentally friendly, cutting back on paper and ink being used, but it also allows me to zoom in on areas that I need to get a better look. This is great for my aging eyes.

The original painting does look much better than the photo and scan.