Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Anatomy of an illustration

Moustachio’s World  ©2015 Karen Mathison Schmidt
16 x 16 x 1.5 inches • oil on 1.5" deep cradled Museum Series GessobordTM
will be finished with a gloss varnish (UV protective) • sides painted dark umber
can be beautifully displayed with or without a frame

$675

from my eBay store

Here’s the finished Moustachio painting (except that I just this minute noticed I haven’t signed it yet; I’ll do that first thing in the morning)!

And here was my inspiration, ...

… the ’Stache Man himself, lounging on top of my big printer in front of the open window.

I switched the view out the window to our front drive ...

 … on a pretty summer day.

THEN, I decided to give our subject a prettier surface to lounge on. 

Since all my pretty tablecloths are packed away, I grabbed this pillow from one of my studio chairs and set it on top of the printer (recently vacated by Moustachio) in order to get the right light on the surface, snapped a photo, et voilà! Reference photo for my tablecloth. Since I didn’t want it to look like the table had a curved surface I used only the very center, relatively flat part of the pattern for my painting.

 Hmm. Fascinating. I like this network.

Even better than Animal Planet!

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