The Human Canvas - Dia De la Moreno

Despite my tendency

of generally publishing these

sessions in the order they happened,

this is the only one I have together,

beyond a brief narration.

 

 

 

We'll get back to
proper order soon enough,
but meantime, here's Karen once again.

She's been a canvas several times now,

with more sessions in the future.

 

 

We have a REALLY cool

Cheshire Cat planned, but that's truly

one that I'm gonna have to play with a bit

before putting it ON someone.

 

 

So a "Sugar Skull" is

another design we've talked about a bit.

I've done one miniature one ONCE before,

and a kind of spur of the moment one at a bar,

which I ended up not being happy with.

 

I'll be including that one in the near future.

 

 

So this session with

Karen gave me a chance for

a bit of a reprieve. Also - a chance

for a bit of practice, if you will. This session

was a day before heading out to Boulder, where

 I knew I'd be doing at least one more. I ended

up doing a couple... one of which is amongst

my favorite pieces to date. Of any kind.

We'll show that one in the

near future as well.

 

One of the nice things
about doing sugar skulls is that
there are no rules. No real rules anyway.
There are a few basic ideas, I suppose, which
tend to show up in various representations,
but beyond this, the rest
is your own.

The nose on this one
is an upside-down heart.
Karen likes anything heart-related,
so this was easy enough
to work in.

The real "practice" was
not so much on the image itself,
but rather the order in which to draw.
This is only important in that I tend to lay
my hand down as I draw, and this causes smudges
and smears if I'm not ready to cover it
with something as I go.

We could call it done at this point,
but after stepping back for a photo-opp...

...I decided it needed a bit of "flash."

Nothing complicated,
but if I surround the skull
with another color or two, the negative
space becomes a color I couldn't have drawn.

And really set it off
once I accent with a bit of black...

...And then step into
the sun for a couple more photos.

 

Oh yeah.

The signature.

I don't always do it, so it's easy to forget.

 

 

But not on this dia.

Thank you Karen. We'll see you again REAL soon.

And thank you, reading right now.

We'll see you soon as well.