Marine Hat

This post is about the hat on my "Tough Old Bird" piece. As you can see, Roy is wearing a dark hat. It is actually a Marine hat, dark green with a gold emblem in the center front. The value contrast in the photo is very interesting to look at, so it's an important part of the ensemble.  I always start with an enlarged line drawing of my subject, and that is what I am showing below.




I outlined the light areas on the hat on the line diagram to make it easier to paint later.

I chose a commercial green fabric as the base for the hat. I placed the line drawing on a light pad, and laid the green fabric over the line drawing. Using a white chalk pencil, I traced the hat outline and marked the light value areas as well.

The green fabric is lighter than the hat color, so I mixed a darker green ink with aloe vera gel and applied it to the darkest areas on the hat. The lighter areas on the hat were made by painting the area with an aloe vera gel mixture of white ink mixed with some green ink. These photos show the hat in progress.

A few paint layers later, getting darker with each layer, I ended up with the hat shown below. I added gold paint to the emblem at a later stage to make it stand out a bit more. 

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