Electric Blue!

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A very blue still-life. But no blue objects. This one is going to be 12" x 24" and it may take me a while. Not because it will be difficult to do (the shapes are very simple) but because I may have to take a break to mail order more blue pencils! This will have an all blue background and then the objects are mostly white except for 3 red, yellow and green pears. I hope the end result will be modern and dramatic, but we'll see!

I'm using coloursofts and Caran D'Ache pencils and then putting Faber Castell Polychromos on top to smooth things and to tint. Yum!

None of this is finished - I'll come back to them later and adjust values and edges. Especially that vase, that is looking pretty flat still!

So stay tuned!

Updates & a new trick or two!

OK I"M EXCITED ABOUT SOMETHING!!!!!!!!

I had sprayed the milk bottle drawing with fixative to prevent dark pencil from rubbing off (all pastelbord users understand that!) Then I went in to fix the bottle distortion that someone pointed out and I was trying to ignore .

So I went in with my new set of polychromoss that I got for Christmas. The reputation of polys is that that are oily and can glaze well, so I thought that would be perfect over fixed pencil & IT WAS! It blended in a smoothed things out - it was yummy. I went in and tried to tighten up some of the grain in areas I was having trouble filling in with my other pencils - like the table top and the red apples. It worked so well! I didn't do it all over - mostly the table top and the apples. Can you tell?

I think I will add this step in all my worki. Fixing then refining grain and details with polys. I'm going to try the same thing with my Caran D'Ache Pablos and see if it works the same.

I said a trick or two - My friend Gary Ruuska just told me at the last CPSA meeting that you don't need a saw to cut pastelbord - which I thought you needed. All you need to do is score on both sides with a utility knife and snap. I tried it today and it worked perfectly! Thanks Gary!


& the second update. I glazed some complements over the left upper side as well as here and there on the grapes and crate top. OK its finished. :D

Caulfield's Dairy

I still want to add some glazes on that watercolor one, but here is a little one that had to be done. Can you see why?

It's 8" x 10" on grey pastelbord with my favorite dry colored pencils. I actually got to scan it in instead of photograph it because of its size. It looks so different this way and you can enjoy the texture. :)

Grapes on a Crate

First off, I need a title. Grapes on a Crate just won't do.

I have to say during this whole process I was very skeptical. I was skeptical of my decision to pair the elegant white bowl and grapes with a brown old crate and surroundings. I was skeptical about all the space around the object - too much too little? I was skeptical about my abilities with the watercolor underpainting. Working with the watercolor is like doing a basic watercolor paitning and then beating it into submission with the dry colored pencil. I do enjoy the watercolor and it brought back memories of pushing around the wet pigments, lifting out color etc. but pairing it with colored pencil is a bit of a tug o' war.

The question on this technique however is "Is it worth it?" The reason why I was doing this new technique is its a way to use white board instead of colored. On the colored board, it brings down the tonal values automatically by the board color influencing all the colors/values in the piece. Its ot a problem unless the artwork is not lit well and it annoys me beyong belief when a piece doesn't show well because of lighting when displayed. I kind of miss the speckliness of my usual technique though when I look at this. I've always thought the specks give them a feel like an old movie reel or a memory.

I can still make changes on it add color etc. The photo is a bit skewed from camera distortion so try and ignore that.

A work in Progress!

More experimenting with watercolor pencils.

This is 11 x 14" overall and so far I've put 6 nonstop hours into it. I'm not even half way through yet.