I wanted to finish the Purple Headed Sneezeweed work before I updated the blog. I really don't like posting in-process photos of works, I sort of feel that it is OK to post the beginnings of a piece, but once the drawing reaches a certain point (over half way finished) it seems to me that posting photos sort of ruins the final reveal. You are of course entitled to your own opinion.
Anyway above is a scan of the final work. The colors aren't quite right, scanners never seem to get yellow quite right, I have a feeling it has to do with the pigments used to create the color. So I have played with this a bit in Photoshop, this is a good as I could get it. When we get a sunny or less overcast day I will try to get a photograph of the drawing and see if I can do better color wise with the camera.
This was done on Stonehenge paper, size of the finished work is approximately 6 x 6 inches. I used a combination of many colors and different brands of colored pencils, mostly underlayers of various Derwent brands, Colorsoft, Artists, and Studio with final overlays of Faber Castell Polychromos. The flower is based on a personal photograph I made last summer the background is totally my imagination, but I rather like it.
The above piece is more of my playing around with a dip pen and colored inks. I decided I needed to take a bit of time away from the colored pencil work and do some sketching from real life, fruit is always good for quick studies so above are 2 pears and an apple. I really just wanted to play with the inks so I wasn't too concerned about accuracy. Done in my Strathmore Multi Media Journal, I used Red, Yellow, Antelope Brown and Indigo Blue acrylic inks for the fruit after making the initial outline with one of my technical pens in black ink. Not wonderful, but sort of fun anyway.
One day last week I took the bus into Boston, I wanted to visit Dick Blicks and the MFA. On the way in I sketched one of my fellow passengers. Just a quick sketch, but not too bad. I used a mechanical pencil for this in one of my smaller sketchbooks.
At the large Dick Blicks in Boston I discovered that they are now carrying open stock of the Caran d'Ache Luminance colored pencils. Oh my, I am in trouble now, well my budget is. These are very expensive pencils, but they are also the most colorfast pencils on the market so of course I want them. I already have a few and now I have the opportunity to acquire more.
At the MFA they are sort of between major shows. The artwork from the Americas showing the influences of Eastern art on western art is still on-going but the Dutch paintings are gone. There are a couple of smaller exhibits of some interest, one is some of the Photographs of Hiro. He was mostly a fashion/advertising photographer still some of his photos are iconic. The other is some of the fashion illustrations of Kenneth Paul Block. I found it interesting how over time he distorted the human form to feature the fashions he is illustrating, bodies and limbs become elongated, heads and feet were made smaller. In his drawings the clothes are what is important not the faces or accurate portraits of the models. The Illustrations range from some of his earlier works to later ones, and it is interesting to see how the figure is more distorted over time, the earlier illustrations show more realistic human models, the later ones are less and less realistic.
Since I am trying to get less realistic for my own art I am trying to pay attention to how other artists do or don't use realism in their works. Not sure I am succeeding with my goal, drawing realistically is a habit that is hard to break, but I think I now have a better understanding of what Picasso was trying to do with some of his art. I am not going to go that way with mine, but I can understand why he did.
A couple of snow photographs from this past weekend. We did get some of the snow that blanketed the east coast the end of last week, but no where near the amount of snow they got to the south of us, particularly in the mid Atlantic states. We got maybe six inches of snow not several feet. But we did get wind. The photo above shows how the snow was blown about settling in patterns and layers.
The snow was just damp enough to stick to trees, so above is a small tree with its icing of snow, you can see some of the trees behind it have a coating on one side of their trunks. I always love photographing snow when it has stuck to the trees this way.
That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome.
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