Making of "Wisdom"
"Wisdom" Ben Geiger art piece 2017.
This new addition to my drawing and painting collection has thankfully been well received already. In a personal attempt to create more traditional media pieces in color. For a long time I have started the piece traditionally or drawn the line work and than finish them digitally. While I still very much enjoy that mode of creation and will continue to create that way, I do also want to expand the diversity of the bulk of my work. I am very excited to be adding this piece in.
Starting this piece I didn't have reference or ideas. I often start sketching female faces in pencil and expand upon them. This time I had the hair of art nouveau posters in my mind and wanted to just put the idea out. Also I wanted to expand my knowledge of skin tones so I knew I needed to be more detailing there. Starting with her face I used between 3-5 colored pencils. Immediately her depth became very apparent and I was even surprised that surrounding lights played upon her like it would a person. It is always fun being in the arts and to be honestly surprised with ones own work and glad.
After her face was complete I finished the rest of inking the picture. I used the same pilot V5 Extra fine pen as I used for the "Tide vs The Island Wizard" book and it seemed to give the rich dark black lines I was wanting. Her hair was next on the to do list. I wanted to make sure that I didn't add a foreign color upon her person yet because I wanted to make sure that her hair and face looked as natural together as possible without other distracting colors. I bounced between the copper tone, reddish purple, and blond. In the end I felt the strongest color and tone that would work with her was the copper color. It also reminded me the most of the nouveau posters in my mind. I redrew in the black lines and her hair was finished.
Progression can sometimes be difficult at this point. When things go correctly I always get an immense feeling to not continue and run the risk of messing it up. However I would not be were I am today if I didn't keep pushing and wreck MANY pieces I was fond of at the time. I get over these types of things quickly and learn lessons I can from them. This is where I got through the rest of the picture coloring, redrew in lines that got faded by the colored pencil(was realistically all of the line work lol), and was done.
Through posting the progress and finished piece on instagram and society6, I am so thankful for the huge amount of support and kind words about this piece. I am so glad people were able to connect with this piece! I am thinking about putting this piece up for sale so I will try and keep you in the loop for that. Please remember to subscribe below and follow me on my social media.
Thank you for your time and I hope you all enjoyed and have a wonderful day!
-Ben
