A Landscape and Illustration

This may look familiar as I have drawn and posted this image once before, however this is a more finished drawing of a scene I photographed last summer at Ames Nowell State Park in Abington, MA. Eventually the woman tossed the ball off the end of the dock and the dog went in after it. I do have an image of the dog jumping off the dock, but rather liked this one better as the viewer can't be sure what has caught the dogs attention. There is a story there, but I will let the viewer make it up for themselves.

I tried a new paper with this drawing Strathmore Drawing 500. It is a white paper, whiter than their 400 Drawing paper, but the same whiteness as the white Stonehenge. It is a bit lighter weight than the Stonehenge I have been working on but has a nice tooth and accepted the pencil well. The size of this is a bit odd 7.25 x 8.75 inches but I didn't realize the oddness of the size until after I finished the drawing, oops. I used several grades of leads 2H, HB, B, 2B, mostly with my clutch pencils and their Staedtler leads.

Let me say now that getting the background trees to look like trees took forever, well not literally of course but it did feel that way while I was doing it. Lots of finicky work with a kneaded eraser and layers of graphite finally gave me the results I was looking for. I did use a straight edge to draw the dock, with man made structures edges that aren't totally straight look off.

I think I am pleased with it, and know that even a couple of years ago this isn't something I would have even thought about drawing, progress. I am slowly learning how to tackle complex drawings.

The above may also look familiar as I posted a sketch to the blog the other day of some garlic, onions and a knife, I called it Chop Chop. As I mentioned then creating illustrations for the cookbook I am working on is still an on-going project.

So I scanned the drawing I had done, pulled it into Illustrator and have been working on it off an on. Looking at it here there are some things that still need work so I am not going to consider it finished but it is starting to get there. The knife was fun, and looks surprisingly realistic. Oh I am doing this in Adobe Illustrator, so this is a computer generated drawing.

The above sketch of a rose hip with stems was done for a challenge in WetCanvas Watercolor forum and is only the first step. The Watercolor forum runs a couple of monthly challenges and one this month has us noticing the small things in nature, with the intent that we first draw then paint an object.

Walking back from the library I passed some rose bushes that still have some of last fall's rose hips on them, this section of stem was already broken so I snapped it off the rest of the way and brought it home. Drawing is done, now I just have to transfer outlines to some watercolor paper and paint. Wish me luck with this one.

As a final image, an early evening/late afternoon sky with clouds and a jet contrail lit by the sun and showing white against a blue sky. Note that the trees are mostly not quite budding just yet. Though there are a few fairly close to me that are a bit more advanced.

That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome, sorry if you are having problems with Bloggers comments section, but if it works for you I appreciate it.