Karaoke Night at the Chinese Bar and Grill

Medium: Large Bristol, graphite pencil, watercolor

 

    This piece was created for a drawing II class. We were to draw a figure from a still-life set. Our model, a very well dressed skeleton.

I began by drawing him in stages, first sketching out various shapes. After I had created more of an outline I began focusing in on more detail. I really struggled with the hat. I tried to give it so much detail, that in fact the hat was straw. I soon found out it lost some of it's value after I painted watercolor over the pencil. Although you can't see with the final photo, I actually went in over he watercolor later with more pencil. I liked making this piece because I gave him a little more character than was given. As you can well see, he has a mustache. I also changed the color of the guitar and interrupted the background with my own artistic variation. I thought I was done as one point, thinking to my self, I was really proud of the work. The colors I used for the bone color; to me gave the skeleton the look like he might have been a real person, and not some plastic imitation of a bone structure. Well, then I looked at it closed and noticed the fingers were all wrong. I really panicked, oh my #%&@; what am I going to do now. The really great thing about water color is sometimes you can go back and pick up color, and that is exactly what I did. I reworked the piece, fixed my mistake; and no one would be the wiser. It just goes to show you, that even if you think you have royally jacked up your work, you CAN fix it; and this isn't just for school work, but the work you would do professionally or otherwise. Sometimes mistakes end up being the best thing you could create anyhow. Just don't be afraid to fail, there is beauty in everything.

As you can see the fingers are getting fixed here.