Rachel 5/1/10

I know i'd been working on Summer and Smoke, but it occurred to me that with this exploration into the drastically new medium of digital sketching on a tablet computer, that perhaps i was trying to do too much at once--that maybe i should focus on a specific technique with my next sketch, and i decided i'd try color application.

I recently went through my design archive and turned up this old paper project version of A Doll's House from literally like 1993 i think, which in the assignment we'd taken as far as doing uncolored renderings in pencil, but not painted. I think maybe we had determined a color palette, but if so, that's lost in the sands of time. But, whatever, i thought that it would be a good way to explore specifically some beginning color application techniques. The sketch itself may be oooooold as the hills, but it serves my purpose well here. Consider Summer and Smoke to be on hiatus for a few sketches on my behalf, while i run with this in a new direction.

So, this is Mrs Linde. I've gone with a fairly obvious color choice for her--purple hues as a blend of cold and warm, since she functions at times as a quiet exposition-excuse character, listening to Nora objectively, yet we know she also has a buried passionate side as well.

I wanted to see if i could apply digital color to this sketch to give the impression of some specific fabric choices. I was aiming for the following:

• Hat: buckram frame with soft velvet cover fabric, applied in structural folds, trimmed in a feather pouf and some geometric ribbon garniture.
  
  
• Bodice/jacket: pinstriped wool in two shades of dark purple, trimmed in silver fox, perhaps with a breath of lavender to the color of it.
  
  
• Bustle drape: crepe-backed satin.
  
  
• Underskirt: alternating crossweave/solid stripe, probably something crispy like taffeta.

What do y'all think? I'm still struggling up the steep learning curve with this, but i feel like i achieved a modicum of success with these. I'm most pleased with the hat--no surprise, since millinery's my day job. I could at least drape a muslin for the rest of the outfit from this sketch, and have some idea the structure and fabric types. (I always look at my renderings with that kind of thing in mind, as a career production artist--could someone easily start building this based on this rendering, or am i going to have to answer a lot of questions in the first draper conference?)

At some point, i'm going to shift off the tablet into Photoshopping and see what kind of digital sketch manipulation i can achieve there. This is all a really fascinating exploration, whether it ever becomes something applicable and useful or not.