Friday, April 6, 2007

Legend of Sleepy Hollow illustration


The assignment was to illustrate a scene from the story, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." I chose to set the scene for later events by showing Ichabod's superstitions and love of ghost tales, and also showing the dreamy, bewitching atmosphere of the landscape that the author describes so well. We got to choose to do it entirely digitally, or partially with traditional methods. I've missed painting this last while, so I was happy to dig up my acrylics and go to town, then finish up on the computer. Hopefully the process was successful. Painting on the computer was definitely helpful in restoring the darks that were lost in the thin acrylic painting, and in cleaning up my clumsy edges. I really tried to focus on keeping my colors alive (something I don't usually do very well). Perhaps they are a little out of control, but at least they're not dead!

This painting has magnified for me a feeling I've had lately of really reaching and stretching for something in painting. . . I always have the feeling the images could be so much cooler, if only I had the vision, the technical skills. . .and didn't make so many mistakes. But I'm learning. (And yes, I had fun with this one).

1 comment:

Casey Stadler said...

Wow! It turned out really great! Good job!