Shells

This is a rendering of a few shells I’ve picked up in our walks on local beaches. For some reason, I was attracted to drawing broken ones, maybe because my eye tries to complete the interrupted shapes.

Technical notes: Made with MyPaint 0.8.2 on Intuos3 4×5 tablet and stylus. I’m really happy with MyPaint so far, it has a wonderful choice of brushes and the tools are very easy to use.

I used three basic layers: one for the pencil outlines in charcoal and 6B pencil brushes, one for the colour and shading on the shells using five base colours (marine blue, yellowed ivory, drab olive, mother-of-pearl white, and clay red) and a variety of brushes, and a bottom layer for the shadows. In addition, MyPaint lets you pick the background layer texture and colour, so I used a white bristol texture.

The colours were not actually named, I picked them from the colour wheel but these are the tints I was shooting for.