In my Minnesota State Symbols series, I’ve been revisiting some of my earlier subjects and doing a new drawing. The excuse is to have an all-new set of cards that aren’t duplicated in any other set, but mostly it’s because I just really like monarchs and lady’s slippers and loons. You know, all things Minnesotan.

Skewed colors in the drawing progression

There’s always a difference in color when I take photos versus scan a drawing, hence why the final image is always a little off from earlier iterations (or rather, why they are all off from the final; sometimes the photos are also off from each other, as the amount of white in a photo can skew the values and colors a bit too). In this case, there’s definitely the photo skewing, but between the last two images is the important step of blending, in this case with turpenoid, to smooth out the background and fill in all the sketchy white bits. That takes the pigment, which up to this point has been concentrated in little chunks, and blends and smears them, sometimes making quite a change from its earlier appearance.

If you want to see all the images side-by-side: