a cute little commission

8" x 10" Prismacolors on Pastelbord

Butterflies & Roses

Butterflies & Spray Roses

8" x 10"

Polychromos on Fisher 400 paper (mounted to gatorboard)

I did something last night that I haven't gotten to do for a long time: stay up drawing past midnight. This is one of the perks of moving my studio back home. The cons of course being the clutter of all my supplies and distractions, but I'll take the late night drawing sessions!

A lesson relearned: Have you ever printed out reference photos where you lighten all the shadows to see what is in them and use both the dark photo and the lightened photo in your drawing/painting?  All I can say is be careful. You can change things obviously from a photograph or life, but changing lighting is a tricky business. I printed out a dark and a  light version  of the reference for this so I could see all the subtleties in the flowers and see the edges of the bug which did not show up in the dark photo. Well... I started the flowers first with just a bit of the background in... all was going well until I switched to my darker photo for the rest. The result was garish - the flowers did not match the rest of the picture at all.  Think about it like in writing... you should not change your tenses from 1st to 3rd person in the same paper. Why would you be able to change lighting on the same drawing ? Anyway I fixed it, but it was a bit of a struggle to remove the lightened details in the petals since the lighter colors in colored pencils have more wax/oil...

That doesn't say you can't lighten things a little bit, just not so much where it is mismatched or changes the light source only on one part. Like let's say you are doing an adorable drawing of your child... but the way the light is hitting him/her his eye color is hard to see because they are in shadow. What should you do? Either draw it without the pretty eye color as in the photo or retake the reference photo with the right lighting to see their eye color! If you bring the eyes out of their shadow and don't change the lighting on the rest of the face - it will look like a demon child!

My beautiful daughter above has gorgeous blue eyes when light hits  them but when the eye sockets are even in a slight shadow like above her eye color does not show. So maybe I'll just pop up the color... I could make the eyes look gorgeous, but what  I'll have is gorgeous eyes but a final portrait with lighting that doesn't make sense. People won't know what is wrong perhaps, but their psyche will pick up that something is off.

butterflies and roses

I am honored to have been asked by Ann Kullberg to jury her annual online members colored pencil show. Please take a looksee at it on her site:

It was REALLY hard to pick winners!!

I thought my vase was way too big for the next still-life I am doing so I played a bit in photoshop. Of course I'll fix things when I draw it, but above are the two reference photos to compare. I plan on starting it tonight as I just got a bunch of my beloved Fisher 400 paper mounted to some gatorboard from Creative Encounters (my favorite frame shop). 

Anyway I can't wait to start - it will be 8 x 10" only, so it will be a sweet little piece, I hope. 

this week...

It is the last week of school (teaching) and unfortuntely I will be very busy so artwork will be put off again. I've got grading... getting assignments back to kids, etc so I envision some overtime on my part.

but I do have some florals in the works... I am on the lookout for fresh from the garden flowers that I want to do some still-lifes with. You know the last one I did (and cut!) and I think I will do it over but with the wood gone and on fisher 400 instead of Pastelbord. It was a bear to get all the spiky detail on the Pastelbord and I don't think I can do it again! & then here I am playing with some spray roses. I think the vase needs to be a little shorter and not so tall. I also think I need something small to place next to the vases... I'm thinking some old marbles.

Anyway things are getting ready for some serious art making - just another week away. In the meantime I just found this pic of me. Its my senior picture nd since it is my 20th reunion I thought I would share it. Some things do get better with age! Although the hair is an artform!

Uh-Oh!

hmmmm... I was trying to crop that still-life, which is on Pastelbord, when the blade skipped and sliced into the drawing. Sigh. After shedding a few tears, since it was actually a rather difficult drawing to do, I have decided to give it away. It can't be sold as is but it can still have a good life on someone's wall.

So the first person to email me their address gets to have it.