A lunchbag art tutorial by Josh A. Weston
- Start with a basic sketch of the subject. Since I am using oil pastels I use Prismacolor pencils to lay down a base that won’t smear.
- Add in the highlights. I used two highlight shades here, white and a yellow green. The white is to help off set the yellow green from the brown bag. Otherwise it would blend in and not feel as bright as it needs to.
- Next I start to define the darks. Keep the darks away from the highlights at this point. This helps us define the image a little better and gives us some color to start blending. If you squint at it in this stage you can start to see the definition it will have.
- Taking a mid range tone of the base color start filing in the space between the highlights and the shadows. It’s okay to over color both the lights and darks. This helps create a nice transition and we can really see the formation of the facial surface area develop.
- Now I’ve filled in the mouth and started the eyes. With oil pastels you fade and blend colors by overlapping them. If you want to have full intensity you need to color block areas. This is why I leave the pupils open with no white behind.
- Now I switch back and forth between my oil pastels and my colored pencils. I used the sharp detailed point of the pencil to give me nice crisp eye lines and shape. Use them to mix with the oil pastel pupil to then make the iris. This let’s it be a colored shade of black but perfect for a witch.
- Then you can start filing in the eyebrows and use a little mix of colors to set them in. At this point re-work your shading a little once you have the completed face.
- Start shading the clothing. I take the same approach here as with the face but with less detail. I block in some areas for the highlight and secondary tones in the hat and body.
- This part happens pretty quickly. I just took som basic black and filled in the remaining areas. The white and purple blended nicely with the black to reflect a little light and show some dimension. I left it without as much detail as the face because that’s really the focus, the clothes is just to complete the tone of the image.
- After that it’s really just putting it in an environment that helps make the main image pop. I chose to use a yellow to reddish sunburst that compliments the green and purple. And viola! We are done. Well, not exactly. I then spray it down with a clear fixative so the oil pastels don’t get all over the inside of the girls’ lunchbags.
