Two Chairs in Companionship

Not what one thinks of as a "beach photo", but these two chairs captured my attention my second day at the beach. They seemed like old companions, contentedly looking out to sea. In fact, the sea is just a matter of yards away from them. I was also struck by the sheer difference in color of the grass beside and beneath them. It was a challenge to capture, as my eyes kept telling me, "green", while my mind insisted that there was enough difference and enough contrast that the colors simply couldn't be the same.
The shadows were also intriguing in themselves. This could make a pretty nice abstract painting some day. I kept thinking about my friend Vicki's Adirondack chairs... this pair is the best I could manage!

Very faintly, on the right side of the paper, is the outline that I drew of colorful clothespins on a line. Again, potential for a very nice, colorful painting. I didn't have time to put in color (my friends and family returned too soon and interrupted me), but I've got a couple of very good shots that are inspiring. I just need to work at it.

The Night in Battle Creek, Michigan

Wow, what a day! Driving around in the hot sun makes for two very tired people. But clearly not tired enough. We shared information about the various blogs that we follow, techniques that we like, traded recommendations back and forth.

Yummy fruit. I was going for the highlights and darks, but of course made everything uniformly dark, so my overall effect was lost. Part of my problem was that in using complementary colors at the beginning, I probably put too much green in the apple, so it ends up being the same color as the mango, even though it was really a reddish-yellow. Fruits clockwise from the top: apple (in rear); mango (unreadable as such); two strawberries; pear.

Experimented with using a blender pencil and a white pencil (wax) as a sort of frisket, coloring over with both w/c and wax colored pencils. Nice technique... and it works. In fact, I was even able to lift the Inktense blue from the white just a bit!

Top sketch is an apple using a white wax colored pencil to protect highlights. It works well. And when I squint at the sketch, I actually see some roundness. That's encouraging. Vicki and I talked about the Adirondack chairs that she's working on, so I tried sketching a pair from memory. I guess it's not much help if they're facing AWAY from each other, is it?!

And what is this? An intriguing question... can you tone paper enough to be able to use a white pencil on it? Mixed up a thick darkish wash (using my travelling w/c palette) of prussian blue, alizarin crimson, burnt umber, with some green, and laid it on pretty heavily. After it dried, we found that several pencils worked very nicely on it, thank you very much. I did a quick sketch of my troublemaker Numa, though it doesn't seem to look much like a cat. Well, it's the thought that counts.

We finally went to bed around 3 am!

The Day in Battle Creek, Michigan

Spent the first day of July in Battle Creek, Michigan, on a sketchcrawl with Vicki. Such fun, and so glad that I met her at Kristy Kutch's workshop in May! We started off with lunch at Clara's Restaurant (great crabmeat and spinach), then sketched in various places as outlined below. Went to Horrock's and bought fruit to sketch -- and eat! I found Ambrosia apples, my favorite, so of course bought some. (They normally have a short growing season so I find them December-March in my local supermarkets.)

The first sketch at a river. Hmmm... doesn't look much like one, does it? If I did this over, I might make the bushes into a water fountain. And as for those lazy susans... hah! I pencilled in the reflections but didn't get around to watercoloring them in.
Done with w/c pencils and crayons.

The clock tower at Clara's Restaurant. This used to be a train station. I spent a lot of time working on this and plan to complete it later. The guy at left (notice the beard?) was someone who stopped to speak with us. When you sit on the steps of a library, people go in and out, and many are curious about what you're doing. A whole bunch of kids passed by and they were really impressed with our work! Go figure.

Who says garages aren't fun to draw? (No-one.) We drove around looking for a place where we could park and sketch without raising concern (!) or looking odd. :) This old storage barn was calling out to be painted. I should note that the side on the right is only about half the actual width. We did five-minute sketches here and it was a challenge to see what we could do in that time. My first one was the door, then the barn itself -- both in w/c/ pencil. The bottom sketch is with my new technical pen, to see what it would take to create DARKS in pen.

Day Lily on Dura-Lar

I'd never tried using CP on Dura-Lar film. Used it today when my I wanted to capture some of the summer beauty outside. The film is fantastic... it's FAST, smooth, takes about 5 or 6 layers... and you can use the reverse side as well! I colored with purple on the reverse side to create some shadowed areas; with red behind the leaf to create darkness.

Benefits? Work is FAST. You can erase mistakes. You can draw in a sketchbook and then trace your work... and you're ready to go. I used Prismacolor, Polychromos, and Lyra pencils on it... no problem

The only drawback I can see is that every mark shows. I'll have to work more carefully next time, using better strokes. Next step... Yupo paper. Wheee!

Members Show @ Ann Kullberg's site

I was happy to just make the deadline for Ann Kullberg's annual Members Show. Each member was allowed one entry only. I submitted "Shadow Play", which is based on a photo I took a couple of summers ago. Like anyone who does photography, I love shadows and what they say about the light that causes them.

I'd love to hear your comments on this. Enjoy the show -- there are some STUNNING works there!

Colored Pencil Tips

I've just been reading this month's issue of Colored Pencil, a wonderful magazine created by Ann Kullberg*. Each issue contains a gallery of CP work, and following a link to a painting of a monarch butterfly (very much like one I'm trying to work on) brought me to Denise Howard's website and some amazing CP art.

One post in particular caught my eye, on organizing colored pencils. I have collected several sets in the last two years, thanks to a generous friend and my two wonderful cats, but have to keep them in their original containers since I am torn between organizing by color (meaning that different brands are together) and displaying by brand (in which case I could as well keep them in the sets). This post expanded on a notion that I've seen elsewhere to use PVC pipe, but this time the pipe is really wide (2.5 inches). And now I have the happy notion of placing them on a circular piece of foamcore board for better access to the pencils. I'm already happy imagining a nice lazy susan where I can have pencils sorted by primary and secondary colors (maybe even warm and cool, hmmm), neutrals, greys, and in the center a logical place for rulers, erasers, and the other accoutrements that we tend to acquire.

Just thinking about this has my creative juices flowing, so it's just as well that I won't be able to go to Home Depot for a few days yet.

*I cannot recommend Ann Kullberg's website and magazine highly enough. I've been subscribing to Colored Pencil (formerly From My Perspective) since the beginning of 2010, and recently took advantage of a marvellous sale to purchase 11 CDs of back issues, so now I have the entire set. (Yes, I like to collect sets.)

Well, they're not shakers but they do the job

The Every Day in May challenge is on Day 4 and I'm keeping up so far. I dug out my poor little combination salt shaker and pepper grinder... both sections were empty. I season my food when I cook it (whenever that is), so there's no need to add these condiments at the table. And it's a pain to keep refilling them; the jumbo size works well!

Lessons learned from today's exercise:
1. I'm getting a bit better with the darks. I'm somewhat hampered by my range of colors since I'm using Koh-i-Noor colored pencils and there's no rich deep red like Tuscan Red or Alizarin Crimson. Nonetheless, I think I conveyed the idea of the multicolored grains without drawing each one. (Yes, look carefully and you'll see that I started out doing that. Found a quicker way.)
2. These colored pencils are quite soft and thus don't maintain a sharp point. I'm inclined to try Derwent Studio pencils another time to see if they'll work a bit better on this paper.
3. The paper! 74lb which should take a few layers before crumbling. I think it does, but I don't think it has a really nice texture. It's not rough. Just... somewhat dry. And gets dirty VERY easily!
4. I do like the composition. It could do with some improvements in many ways, but I like cutting off both containers at the sides and then one at the top and the other at the bottom. I may explore this idea further.

Koh-i-Noor colored pencils and Micron pen

How I keep fit

When you have two sets of stairs in your house, you HAVE to climb them and thus you get an automatic fitness workout. Thank heavens!! So, welcome to the top of the stairs leading to the second floor landing. Once again, my darks just aren't quite there. The flowers are a bit iffy as well. I added the pot because the area seemed bare, but obviously I didn't have a real model to draw from! Baby steps.

Koh-i-Noor colored pencils.

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.

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...

Sunflower in January

Took a challenge on the Pencil Painting Network. What fun it was! Enjoy the sunflower, and please leave comments.

For those who are curious, I used Prismacolor pencils on Stonehenge paper.

No need to cry

A little red onion, all by itself in my fridge. I hate to cook, so this is probably left over from efforts a couple of weeks ago. I decided to do a study of it today. A study seems to make more sense than a complete still-life composition. I'll tackle this again from a different angle, get to know it a bit better. I'm really pleased with the highlight and the shine. But how on earth to get the shadows and other parts to look smooth?

Egg white?

What fun and what a challenge! Alyona Nickelsen, who does the most amazing things with colored pencils, has a beautiful painting called "The Color of White2" that you can find on the Pencil Painting Network ( I've just joined it). I took this picture in December when I was making a whole lot of devilled eggs and had the same thought... wouldn't this be a great painting? So... here it is as a photo; hope to paint it sometime soon. (Minus the bad reflections, of course.)
*April 10, 2011: The danger of not keeping up with my blog. The PPN has changed its address and it appears that few are posting there now. Here's where you can find Alyona's painting.