Nicole Caulfield Fine Art

Okay FINISHED! :-) Bad photo - per usual! That's the workshop I need - learning how to photograph your artwork well. I also need a better camera!

Someone asked me what color red I used on the shoes so I'll give a description of how I built up the shoes.

You could say I did an underpainting for them but I always work piece by piece and never do a proper full underpainting underneath - I am just too impatient. I first marked out the little white highlight with white. In the light areas of the shoe, I put Prisma peach and in the dark areas Derwent Coloursoft Loganberry. Loganberry is a lot like tuscan red in prismacolor. That is it for the so called underpainting - just peach where I want the RED lightest and loganberry where I want dark red and a good deal of the shoe with neither on it. I never use white in the underpainting because it is so waxy that it is hard to layer on top of.

Then I built up the RED of the shoe. I layered pale vermillion over the peach and partially into the loganberry. Then I layered poppy red over the pale vermillion (leaving a good deal of the pale vermillion as is for the lit part of the shoe) and over all the loganberry. Then I layered crimson red over the poppy and loganberry areas leaving some poppy exposed. I usually call this bridging the two colors - making them blend together.

Then I used some black where I felt like it just needed that bit of EXTRA DARK - which wasn't much. I also used a bit of kelp green to subdue the red in a couple of places and a bit of Derwent acid yellow in the sunlit part of the shoe to really set it off.

Some of the steps were repeated and repeated - going back and forth between the two if needed. For instance, after I put the reds over the loganberry I layered loganberry once more over the reds.