A Blast From The Past! WIP on Brom's Call For Entries Angel

Here's a trip down memory lane, sparked by some kick ass artists from http://artorder.ning.com/.

We were chatting about learning from old master's works and it reminded me of one of the college projects I did while at the Academy. In my watercolor 201 class with Mr. Mat Barber Kennedy he had his first year painters do a piece after another artist. He did open this up to more modern artists as well.

Mat Barber Kennedy

The important thing was that the artwork wasn't done in watercolor, ink, or gouache but in a medium we hadn't used before. Mainly that meant oils or acrylics but I think that some people tried to copy digital medium as well. I had several pieces to choose from but in the end I settled for one by Gerald Brom, out of one of the Spectrum books. 

Mr. Kennedy approved the choice and helped me to scale the piece to fit the paper size I was working on, which was a dull sheet of arches hot press watercolor paper 140lbs. Approximately 20x30 inches I believe. I don't do well with grids so most of it was eyeballed onto the paper.

Spectrum's Call For Entries by Gerald Brom

Once the drawing was laid out I did something I normally despise, and that is applying a layer of frisket or artists' masking fluid to the painting. It is a thin bit of laytex that keeps paint off areas you don't want to paint and is easily removed. I tend to not like it because it leaves you with gritty edges that take time to smooth or color match to perfection. 

My pallet consisted of Windsor & Newton permanent rose, yellow ochre, cadmium red, windsor violet, and a touch of cobalt blue traded by my friend Kevin for some Hooker Green! Yay! Sharing is caring!

The rare use of frisket aka mask media

I worked up the background and removed the frisket, then started to detail the character. I had a few copies of the piece by Brom at my work table, and referenced it often. This is one of my earliest watercolor pieces and I learned a lot from it and also really saw how much I had learned  not just from Mr. Kennedy but from my peers also. 

After Brom

I never did finish this piece. It was the last project of the semester and I think I stayed an additional hour or two after class before throwing in the towel. All in all copying from someone else was a great lesson learned, especially in a different medium. I have done a few others like this, one being by fantasy watercolorist Paul Bonner to really see what I can do with the medium. 

YOU  should try it!