Eggs, an Illustration and Roses

Eggs in graphite, they were supposed to be eggs in pen and ink as the reference photograph I used for the above drawing is one of the WetCanvas Pen and Ink forums April challenge images. But when I started the initial drawing of this I found I just couldn't stop. I needed/wanted to put in the rest of the shading. Over an hour later (shading with graphite takes time) I ended up with 3 eggs in graphite and no way was I going to add ink to this, I had worked too hard to get the shading just so to add ink and then erase the graphite.

Bother now I have to figure out if I want to even try this in pen and ink, which I sort of think I do as shading in ink is a lot trickier than shading with pencil. Though I have to say it probably won't take me anywhere near as long to do this in ink as it did in Graphite.

Done in my sketchbook, it is about 3 x 6 inches, and done with various hardness pencils, not really sure which ones as I wasn't totally paying attention, pretty sure there was a 2H, HB, B and probably a 2 or 3B in the mix.

Above is another colored pencil drawing, again a fairly quick sketch, inked with one of my technical pencils and then added colored pencil. Probably should have taken more time with the coloring but I wasn't in the mood. Used a combination of pencils, Polychromos, Derwent Artist, and even a couple of my old Venus pencils, depending on the color I was going for.

Inspiration for this is Edward Lear's poem of the Owl and the Pussycat. I got the pea green boat but missed the guitar and the jar of honey. I was drawing totally from imagination so have no idea if I am actually sort of copying an Illustration I saw in the past, probably for some elements.

Don't know what has gotten into me lately I am not usually at all whimsical with my drawings but here I am drawing first toys and now this pair, no clue what will be next.

Over the weekend I finished the watercolor of the rose stem with rose hip. Not wonderful, but not too bad either I guess. I am now working on the flower for the Floral/Botanical forum April challenge. Per usual at this stage of a painting I am wondering if I should bother continuing to work on it but probably will.

The background is a color I was mixing with some of my new watercolor paints. I realized that I needed some artist quality paints and also that I needed some additional colors for my pallet so I indulged myself and ordered a few new colors. The kind of mauve background was a result of my playing around with them.

Once I finish that one I will go back to the leafing plant with frost damage that I did the drawing of last week. There are a lot more colors in that one so it will be more of a challenge.

Last image for today, my neighbors Andromeda has started to bloom and I managed to get a photograph of it the other day. Here in the Northeast this evergreen shrub is one of our earliest bloomers in the spring, if you see crocus then the Andromeda isn't far behind.

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

Poem Illustration

This past week I finished my latest Graphic Design project. We had to illustrate a poem with images/silhouettes from photographs. The Instructor had two poems we could pick from, I chose Dib Dab by Paul Beatty. I understand that the internet presentations of the poem leave off the last line, smooth as f***.  Our version was from the internet so that phrase isn't in my work.  I didn't take/have the time to chase down a print version of the poem to verify the last line so I left it out.  At the left is the cover of the folded presentation piece. The final piece is 8 inches square when folded and there are 6 panels. Next image is the presentation piece partially unfolded.

next is the completely unfolded work: 

I don't think I need to tell you that this project took hours to complete. For the curious the programs used were Photoshop then Indesign (Adobe's desktop publishing program). The prints were spray mounted on cut illustration board. I chose this fairly simple layout for my final presentation and was able to arrange the sections for printing in pairs. I am going to include images of the the pages as they look in my final file versions.

For some sections of the poem it was hard to find images, for instance I am not thrilled with the center section. I ended up taking my own photo of a two dollar bill, as internet photos of drifting money tend to show 100 dollar bills or larger denominations, and I needed/wanted a 2 dollar bill. I have been saving one for years and as you can see it finally came in handy.

That is it for today the next images I should have for you will be from my Illustration class, animals under a tree. In the meantime comments are always welcome.