Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Cherry On Top

Always an admirer of Claus Oldenberg's Spoonbridge and Cherry, I thought I would do a playful cherry piece myself as part of my box series.


As I said in the last post, I actually composed this ages ago, but hadn't started on it. I took loads of photos and then changed some things up using photoshop. This is a great advantage of working with photos rather from life... sometimes you just want to get to the drawing part and not the composing.


I am posting this at such an early stage so you all know I am working!


The end result will be 12 x 16, the same as this other box piece I did, which I can't seem to find in a blog post. Weird! I must not have blogged it, so I guess I will now. I rushed to have this done for my Open Studio last month, and it hasn't left the studio yet to be shown in a gallery, I just received the frame in the mail the other day. The application is somewhat Illustrative looking, but having lived with it on the wall of the studio for a while now, the shallow depth of the box is rather convincing, which is what I love about the box pictures!


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks great so far Nicole. Glad to see your back at it. Question...I believe that I read on one of your blogs that you use a support called ampersand (probaly spelled that wrong)I really like the idea of varnishing colored pencil work and then framing without a mat or glass. Do you burnish your colors a lot with your work on this support? I'd like to try using this support just need to know how it reacts to burnishing. Have a great day

Unknown said...

Hey Scott!

Yep its Ampersand Pastelbord. I use it for all of my still-lifes, but not for portraits because the grain is a bit large and you can't get the subtleties as much.

I do burnish on it and it works well, but I build up to that burnishing point slowly. I actually didn't used to burnish on it, but then when I realized having a bunch of wax on there protected the colors more when I varnished it, so I started burnishing.

Knowing a little bit about how you work from your wip's I don't think you would like the grain on this stuff much. I would try the smooth Claybord by Ampersand if I were you. & Then there are the new boards by Ristx which I can't give advice on.

the one weird thing about working on any of the boards is there is no "give" from the soft paper!

I would definately try out some of the Ampersand prodeucts though if I were you! & if you like the claybord or even the gessobord, those can be bought cradled (unlike the Pastelbord) which means no framing even!

http://www.dickblick.com/vendors/ampersand/

Unknown said...

& Scott write me if you try it and you need to know what varnish to use! The trick is "spray" varnish!

Anonymous said...

Thanks Nicole for all the great info. I guess I'll experiment with the boards to see if I like them or not. I really would like to cut out the expense of mats and glass. That would be great. I'll see if I can buy small pieces of each brand to see which I like the best if any. Thanks also on the varnish tip. That makes sense. I'd hate to brush on some vanish and see the colors run all over the place.
Thanks again Nicole..I'll let you know how my experiments go.

Perpetual Chocoholic said...

They look so neat when they are partially done. Pencils more so than anyother medium.