Solar Eclipse (On Paper)

Aw shucks, it was not visible in the Netherlands. On 8 April 2024 appeared the Solar Eclipse in the U.S., and everyone was talking about it! Some of the resulting photos I came across were amazing. Definitely something to paint about! And what a challenging project to embark on. Of course, though, I wanted to include some characters in it, namely Little One, and thus I searched on Google to find something I can be inspired by and found this gem! It is by an illustrator in the U.S. called Spitestar whose work can be seen on Deviant Art.

Now I was just practicing to see if I can get a similar effect with Little One using black paper! On a blank page from Art Gecko sketchbook, I set about roughly drawing with a white chalk pencil. Then went over the sun/moon with fluorescent yellow Chalk Marker by Securit. Not sure if that was a good idea so went over it with some thick white pastel by Cretacolor and spread it out with my finger. Now that’s a bit better! As for Little One, I painted her eyes and hair with white Uni Posca Pen, the rest filled in with grey pastel also by Cretacolor.

As you can see, the intensity of the light combined with the pitch dark background is supposed to make the subject glow. I made Little One’s eyes white this time rather than colored just for effect and the skin grey rather than the usual warm tone to make her really pop out of the dark. And white streaks on hair to enhance its highlights. Quite a cool sketch so far. Just practicing now, and next I’d like to experiment with wet media on canvas board and then digitally on Procreate. If I could do something different, I’d introduce a tiny bit of color like the original artist has done and of course add more texture to it. Let’s get started!