Nap Time with Yogi and Boo Boo

So the sponging thing intrigued me and I wanted to try more of it.  If you have a caddy of Cel-Vinyl - which I do, in 8 ounce bottles - you can pick the color you have the most of (or conversely, the most unused) and use that for sponging.  You can then digitally adjust the color with your software.

Note: Photoshop will jump on any color... including black... and change the hue like a trooper.  SketchBook Pro, on the other hand, only recognizes color.  You can't change black to something else... but that's fine.  I was sponging with orange paint - a color I don't use often enough - and SBP adjusted it nicely to the blue that you see.

This is a pretty good way to ensure you'll use your colors consistently and you won't have one bottle of mauve-green that stubbornly insists on not going away (mauve-green, now that I think about it, would be some sort of brown... which would probably get used.)

I'm cutting my friskets out of copy paper which I suspect is how a lot of people did it because it works so well... even with the sponge slightly damp it works perfectly.

Here Art Lozzi advised a gentleman to cut his friskets from acetone sheets:

I think the advice that is missing here is, "Use punched acetone cells and an inking board or some system that holds the cell in place."

Because when I try cutting friskets from acetone 2 things happen: (1) I find the stuff hard to cut, although Mr. Lozzi does address that here: "Score the shape you want without cutting through, then push the shape.  It will fall out."  And (2) it's hard to hold the cell exactly in place while sponging and I always wind up with a mess.  I don't have that problem with copy paper.  And, incidentally, copy paper is a lot cheaper then acetone cells and you can always replenish your supply at your closest WalMart.

I'm sure with a little practice I'd get a lot better at cutting friskets from acetone but, still, the punched cells held in place by a post system would eliminate placement problems.

Anyway, using my klunky system I came up with a Yogi and Boo Boo composition:

I'm especially happy with the wood textures where I used the "whole sponge" approach.

The figures of Yogi and Boo Boo are illustrative of why Cel-Vinyl is the preferred medium for covering large, flat areas.

Cel-Vinyl, when you get good at applying it (I'm still no good at applying it), lays flat.  With some careful repainting you can pretty much eliminate brush marks.  This of course was its original use: to paint cells evenly and consistently. 

That said, I'm having a few issues with my bottle of brown Cel-Vinyl where it wants to separate from the binder and lay unevenly.  I addressed that with some repainting... and adding a little white helps a lot... but it shouldn't be happening.  Still, after scanning in Yogi I found a lot of anomalies and I had to use a digital "blender" to smooth out the paint.

I really shouldn't have to do that.  Boo Boo, on the other hand, because he was a combination of brown and yellow (the binder in the yellow helped solidify the brown paint) laid out flat and even and no touch up was required.  So I guess it's a little hit and miss.

Details were painted in gouache which is a medium that allows for correction of mistakes.  Trust me, I make mistakes.

I see that my challenge now is to paint figures as flat and evenly as I can against abbreviated, highly sponged backgrounds.  That's the look I'm aiming for and I'm hot on the trail.

Stay tuned.