Cascading Light by Kevin Nakagawa, CA 2008
Dye based and pigment inks on 4.25" x 11" Glossy Card Stock.
Note: Castle by Fruit Basket Upset. Stampscapes imagery includes Eerie Moon 282F, Cloud Cumulus 018E, Tree Cluster 266D, Tree Cluster 244E, Sedge Filler 251C, Buck 009B, and Reeds Lg. 068D. Images were stamped in black ink. The progression of images was somewhat front to back. I stamped the foreground trees first and then followed up by stamping the smaller trees behind them. Here's the trick on doing this. If I just stamped the far trees in the same value of black I would lose the shape of the closer trees and they might all blend in together visually. So, to control this a little I wiped off some ink off the bottom of the far trees before making my impressions. I didn't wipe them all off but just some so that the far trees were more of a grey tone at the base. Cloud Cumulus was stamped next. Two layers of this image were stamped and then masked and the Castle was added. The Castle was then masked and a layer of clouds were stamped to appear as if behind the Castle. Finally, Eerie Moon was stamped in the sky.
I used three colors to ink this scene. The first was a Memento "Grey" by Tsukineko. This ink has a nice consistency to it for a first color. The ink is thick, saturated, and a little "slippery". It goes on the paper nicely but doesn't absorb into the paper too quickly. This allows you to spread the ink smoothly without leaving heavy marks created by your applicator. I added shadows into the scene using this ink. My focus was the four corners of the scene to frame it and then worked on the shadows. Good areas to add depth were under the trees, in areas of the clouds, and on the right side of the castle. I saw these as possible areas where the moonlight wouldn't be and to create a dark-light-dark-light oscillation from the top of the scene to the bottom. This lighting scheme is something that I do in all of my scenes. Black ink was added to accentuate the darkest areas of the shadows. Afterwards, I decided to add a Ranger Industries Peach Bellini to the scene to add warth and depth to the color scheme. Colors were added with a Colorbox Stylus Tool.
