More power to the plugs!

Day TWO of the Every Day in May challenge: Draw a power plug. These two were side by side, peacefully on my desktop, and so naturally there was an instant title...

I found a sketchbook I haven't used in a few months, so I decided to make an EDiM kit: Koh-i-Noor colored pencils (set of 24), pen, pencil and various necessary accoutrements.

Pears for Vicki

Had these two pears sitting in a photo for a while now... from a colored pencil workshop that I took about a year ago. Changed some colors and the setting, did a lot of burnishing.

I want to reach a stage where my strokes don't show. I know it's one technique, but somehow they look very scattered. It's all about control.

Prismacolor and Polychromos colored pencils on yellow cardstock.

Every Day in May #1

Soap.

One simple word, so many ways to think about it. This is a bar of my favorite soap (you may need to rotate the image clockwise to figure it out).

This is done with colored pencils (Faber-Castell and Prismacolor) on purple paper.

Lessons learned:

• NEVER, NEVER use thin paper. I chose the purple because it matched what I wanted to do, but it took only about 3 layers of pencil, and the surface was unstable. Those little dots scattered throughout are bits of the paper that came off and were pencilled in... and I was using a VERY light touch.
• Get with the darks. Even with some post-scanning enhancement, the picture doesn't look the way that it did on the paper. Of course, my darks couldn't be as good as I'd have wanted, because the darned paper wouldn't accept any more!

Well, there are 30 more days to go. And improvement each time.

Every Day in May

A new series of EDM challenges, Every Day in May, is just what I need to get started again. I can do this. It's just 31 days, right? And each day has only 24 hours, so I'll be done before I know it.

Wish me luck. And excitement!

Revitalizing myself

Went to the 25th Annual Juried Exhibition of the Chicago Calligraphy Collective yesterday. What a time that was! It was coordinated by our local calligraphy guru and teacher, Anne Binder, and 6 of her students accompanied her. It was a pleasure to watch Anne "do her thing" as one of the past winners of the Purchase Prize -- several of those winners were there and we had the opportunity to watch them in action as they "calligraphed" on a huge board.

Four calligraphers also did small demos. I was struck by one artist who used graphite overlaid with graphitint pencils that she then wet and (once dry) erased. Opened such possibilities for using my own graphitint in new ways.

Followed the exhibition with a trip to a paper store and then to Blick. Yum!

Have now started a painting of two pears (working title="Complementary pair"). Yes, we're one-third of the way into 2011 and this is not only my first post for the year, but my first post in A WHOLE YEAR! With any luck, that will change.

nail polish

Something about nail polish must have fascinated me. I really like this painting in spite of the technical problems with it. I do recall having FUN and really getting into the creative zone while doing this.

How polished are you?

I'm having fun using colored paper. Two recent efforts are of nail polish. The hardest part of this? Using paper that's not quite the color of the polish and still trying to convey the effects. I'm happy with what I've done so far, but... there's still a way to go. And I don't like this textured paper. From a distance it's not so bad, but close up, the texture conflicts with the image. And try as I might, I haven't been successful so far in smoothing it out through burnishing. But I have untextured paper at hand...