Birdhouse for Colonial Theater

I've finished my contribution to the Colonial Theater fundraiser in Keene. The theme is Birdland so they asked us all to put our artwork on a handcrafted birdhouse to be auctioned off. I showed my birdhouse untouched in an earlier post:
 http://nicolecaulfieldfineart.blogspot.com/2010/09/since-art-in-park-ive-gotten-one.htm

& here is the finished piece. It is all colored pencil. I used orange zest (a thinner) to melt the colored pencil on the top and bottom spindles which gave it a colored stained look. The rest is straight colored pencil.

If you would like to try colored pencil on wood,   the pencil  went on the wood easily but did not allow for layers or any mistakes. When you drew on it it incised the soft wood which was sometimes good and sometimes bad.  I also couldn't find anything that could erase the pencil on it. Get yourself a wood piece that is nice and smooth as well so the texture isn't a fight.

Since Art in the Park I've gotten one artwork finished, but its not something I can show you presently... sorry about that. Its Top Secret for now. :)

So on to other things...

I was asked to participate in a fundraiser for our local arts theater: the Colonial Theater.

It is one of these dinner/art auction/raffle things that they have every year. They always do themes for it and the artwork auctioned goes along with the theme. One year it was "Tray Jolie" and we decorated trays. This year the theme is:

 “Birdland” : Birdland was a jazz club founded in New York City in 1949 by Charles Parker, a noted saxaphone player. The club still exists today but not in the original place.

So of course we are applying our artwork to birdhouses. Mine is the one that I am holding above. Ignore the face I am making - that is the face you make when a 7 year old is trying to take your picture and is taking a long time.

I have never drawn on wood so my daughter and I practiced today on little $1 birdhouses I piked up at the craft store. The wood is rougher than the wood on the nicely crafted house I will be using but it allowed me to try out which pencils worked and how much detail and layering I could get.

I found that the waxed based pencils worked best. I preferred Derwent Coloursofts over Prismacolor because they are very soft and covered the wood much more quickly. The Prismas worked fine but would take longer to over the wood.

As far as details and layering goes - they both performed the same: not that well. The colors go on bright and pretty but you will only get a maximum of 3 layers on there. So I think my design will have to be pretty stylized which is okay.

I am thinking about doing apples in a tree for the birdhouse so that's what I did for practice: