Firefly Grave

Original: 10x13
Medium: Mixed medium (ink, gouache, water-dyes, Prisma-colored and Verithin pencils)
Copyright Notice: Illustration 2015 by Bob Giadrosich/Xiangbala Studio. All Rights Reserved.

This piece was finished in between the brush/ink piece "High Country Snows:" fav.me/d9m03nk and ink/wash piece "Back in Town:" fav.me/d9mi60w and was my last color piece for 2015.

Everything but the figure has a gouache under painting, on which I used water-dyes. There were several reasons for doing this; one of which was the gouache tends to get a little "chalky," and I wanted the figure to be as translucent as possible, so layering the water-dyes helped to maintain some of that (which was probably lost when I went over everything with Prisma colored pencils, being another whole layer of "chalky" in and of itself).

Building up the color was done following the same steps as in "Redline:"fav.me/d8iajx9 except the back ground, which has 16 layers of color (mostly with Prisma) to contrast with the fireflies. 90% of the fireflies were drawn in place with pencil to establish density and position, and then the last ones added with paint to balance the composition.