Finished Colored Pencil and other

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.

A Landscape and Two Still Lifes

I have been taking a bit of a break from art, well the creating part, drawing, painting and pen and ink. Finishing the Chipmunk last week was a bit intense and I needed to sit back a bit and recharge.

It wasn't a total break I spent a fair amount of time reviewing photographs for future drawings, reading discussions on the WetCanvas Watercolor forum and reading a book. I am reading Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards, so even if I haven't been creating much art I have been thinking about it.

I am finding the book interesting though for me not all that instructive, have to say that I think it is probably an excellent book for someone who thinks they can't draw. Course one would have to do the exercises, reading how to draw doesn't teach anyone how to actually do it unless they step up and draw.

Anyway in the middle of the week I worked on a couple of quick still life drawings, but just couldn't seem to find the motivation to work on my watercolor paintings or to start a new graphite drawing.

Today for the first time since I finished the chipmunk I was able to motivate myself to put pencil to paper for more than a few minutes. The above drawing is one result. I am thinking about making this a more finished drawing but wanted to spend a bit of time doing a fairly quick study of it to see how it would work.

From a photograph I made last summer at Ames Nowell State Park in Abington, MA. I made a series of photographs of this woman and her dog, this is the one (slightly modified) that I liked best. Though there is another with the dog jumping off the end of the dock that I have thought about using. Now I have to decide if I want to do a more finished version but I think the composition works even though the dog is watching someone out of view. Actually I am thinking about doing a pen and ink version of this, but have to think on that a bit longer as there are some tricky bits that I am not sure if I could get to work in pen and ink.

Above is the pen and ink still life that I managed to work on mid week, an apple, a pear, an orange in a wooden salad bowl. Obviously I didn't spend very long on this. I was going to do a more finished graphite drawing of the same set up, but it never really happened. At this point the pear has been eaten so I don't think I will ever finish the pencil drawing of this subject.

Another still life, for this one I pulled a small bake bean pot out of the cupboard along with a small single serving pottery casserole dish and a wooden spoon. Not sure how accurate this drawing is, the surface I put the objects on was at a bit of a slant and I have to think it didn't make my objects easier to draw.

I am thinking about doing some photographs with these, at the very least I will probably use them for drawing subjects again maybe I will add some onions and dried beans to the mix.

As a close this photograph of a couple of sparrows sitting in a bush. The building behind is a small church. The sparrows love taking cover in the evergreen bushes in front of the church and the hedge around the building across the street, so there is almost always a small flock of birds resting here. Even if I don't see them I can hear them twittering away.

That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome.

Ink Work, more Still Life's

I hope you aren't getting bored by all the still life's I have been drawing as above is another one. Had some fruit on hand along with this wooden bowl so thought it would make a good subject. I don't spend a lot of time on these just getting straight to it with my technical pens, mostly the 00 (.30) though occasionally a larger nib.

Often I do one pencil version and then an ink version, I didn't bother with the pencil version of this set up.

For the above I just drew outlines of a couple pieces of fruit in various positions, not an actual arraignment, just something I put on paper. My plan was to scan it into Photoshop and then play.

So above is the outlined fruit in the black and white image with color added in Photoshop. I am much happier with these pears than the ones I did a week or two ago. For one thing the color is more accurate, Bosc pears are more brown than yellow/green. I am also trying to use more shades of color on each object to add the illusion of depth.

I don't spend a lot of time on these, partly because I want them to have a slightly unfinished look. For me that is one of the problems with computer graphics, colors are often too uniform without the shading you see in real life or in non-computerized paintings.

Another drawing from WetCanvas monthly challenge photographs. The above image is from one of February's selected photos. It was a quick study and I am not totally thrilled with it, though there are parts that I like.

I rather like this photograph so am spending more time with it by attempting to translate it as a watercolor. So far no ink, I am just using paint. With my method of working it is a bit slow going so I don't have a finished painting to post today.

The above photograph is from yesterday. The weather reports yesterday were all about the snow storm we are supposed to be getting tomorrow (6 to 10 inches) and nothing about the snow that was falling out of the sky for most of the day. It didn't amount to much, just a couple of inches but still... It was a fairly warm day (temp around 32 degrees) so the snow was wet and sticky. This photograph shows a neighbors tree and bushes with their decoration of snow. I know it doesn't look it, but this is a color photograph, just most of the color was leached out by the grey conditions.

That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome.

June Challenge, Figure Dwg. and Nature Journal

Above is another of my pen and ink drawings done from a Challenge  photos in the WetCanvas Pen and Ink forum. This one is for the month of June. I fear I rather dashed it off, and am repenting at leisure, as it were. I see lots of errors in this one, errors that I wouldn't have made if I had spent more time on it.

But I haven't had a lot of patience with my drawings so far this month. I had several non-art related things that I have had to take care of the past couple of weeks, but just spent 2 hours resolving one of them today. Had to renew my Drivers License, and I needed to have a new photo made so... Thankfully I am now all set for 5 years, and hopefully I will now be able to get to work on one of my longer projects, like finish my Border piece.

Above is a spread from my Nature Journal. We had a beautiful day Saturday, and originally I was going to go up to the Blue Hills Reservation but decided to head out to Stony Brook in Norfolk, MA instead. I am glad I did as I had a good afternoon in a lovely spot watching wildlife.

Drawings in the Journal are on top a leaf from a Grey Birch. Looks a lot like the European Birch leaves I have drawn in the past except it is flatter along the bottom edge. Now that trees are again leafed out I though it was time that I get back to drawing some for identification purposes.

The bottom image is of a turtle I spied hauled out of the water and under some bushes along a path, believe it or not, it wasn't really that noticeable and I almost walked right by it. Since this was one very large turtle (about 14 inches long) I have to admit feeling a bit strange about that. I believe this is a snapping turtle, though I didn't really investigate it that thoroughly, if it was a snapper I didn't want to disturb it, they are not friendly animals.

Also seen on this visit, Wood Ducks (too far in the distance for me to photograph but view-able with the binoculars), green frogs, a yellow warbler, red wing black birds, painted turtles, muskrat and a large dragonfly. The muskrat was more heard than seen, I heard a loud splash near me then noticed a dark brown sleek body dashing over/through some bushes on a small island and then watched a head swimming away from me.

Above is Monday nights figure drawing. Scott is off to his Graduate Study Program for the next 2 months so Monday's session was run by our model. She decided that with Scott away she should change up the pose significantly. We don't often get backs when Scott is around so this was a real change. I rather like how it came out. I certainly used my 4B pencil on this one getting those darks in place.

Above is a photograph I made at Stony Brook. If you look closely you will see a green frog in the center right portion of the image. It really blends in but is there. I don't normally get to photograph frogs, at this time of year I can hear them but they are usually not close enough to me to photograph.

That is it for today, they are predicting some really nice weather so I may make a dash for the Cape in the next couple of days, I haven't been down there since last fall and I am due. In the meantime comments are always welcome, and I hope everyone is having a great June.

New ATC and Oct. 26 Dwg

Above is my drawing from last nights posing session. I think I like it, though I am a bit concerned about some areas and how they read to other viewers. Still I have done all I want to or can do to it so it will have to stand on its merits at this point.

We were supposed to have a different model, but I gather she canceled at the last minute so we had one of our regulars instead. I hope that she is rescheduled and can make it at some other date, it is always fun to see a new face. 

Otherwise it was a good evening with a good turnout of artists. I think there were 7 of us last night, counting after the fact can get tricky since people show up at various times, and if it is after I start drawing I am not really paying a lot of attention. During breaks we tend to spread out and chat in various groups. It was an overcast rainy sort of day here in MA yesterday so I didn't get out to take any photographs. Luckily for me today is sunny so I was able to get a good photograph of last nights drawing. 

After I finished my challenge quilt last week I spent some time working on a couple of other pieces I have been thinking about doing. One is a semi large pen and ink, which I am still drawing in sections, but have started some pen and ink work on, and the other was an ATC. The ATC is pen & ink with some colored pencil, and is directly below.
 

 

Not quite sure where this design came from, obviously the pears have been on my brain because of the challenge quilt, but I didn't want pears alone so I added the apples and some grapes. I didn't have any grapes on hand so these are from memory.

My other project for the week is to design and get started on my latest challenge quilt. The challenge for this month is to create or select a Haiku poem and create a quilt illustrating the poem. Most of my fellow FFFC members are creating their own poems, but though I love reading poetry writing it isn't my thing. Instead I went though a book I have had/known since I was very young called Little Pictures of Japan. This book is filled with illustrated poems, some Haiku, but also some longer poems, along with a few short stories. I have selected a traditional Haiku from this book written by Basho a very famous Japanese Haiku poet. I will save my selected poem for another post. Primarily because I still need to design the quilt.

That is it for today. Per usual comments are welcome.