White Espresso

White Espresso 6" x 18"

Coloursofts on Green Pastebord 

I hope everyone has made it through this week's crazy weather! It did alter my week a bit, having a snow day for the whole family on Wednesday... that was our 4th snow day. The kids are getting a bit bored with it and unfortunately they have a week off at the end of the month called  "Winter Break."  Don't worry though I've gotten pretty good at working with constant interruptions. My husband was pretty impressed even, as he usually ends up stopping his work and playing video games with the girls. 

I barely finished this piece in time to have a post for the week as tomorrow I am going into work (which is usually a dedicated art day), but I am glad I finished. I did have to photograph it with a light shining on it  since it was dark, so I will try and replace this photo with a better one when the place is lit up tomorrow after work. There's a bit of a glare on the left side - you can tell especially in the the dark space of the bottom of the espresso pot. It is a bit blurry too. 

 The idea behind this still life was to have all silver and grays, but hidden inside are pops of color. Kind of like what it looks like outside my New Hampshire home right now!  

There are a couple of progress shots below that were taken during daylight hours!

Chocolate and wine

I don't usually post food on here... but since I spent HOURS making these for my daughter's class  Valentine's Day party tomorrow, I thought they deserved to be posted. They are chocolate ganache brownie sandwiches, obviously shaped like hearts and with some frosting in between the sandwiched brownies & no there are no extras!

Below is the drawing I worked on after Shannon. Its 6 x 18" on green pastelbord - a color I don't usually use, but my friend Gary Ruuska said it was his favorite color, so I gave it a go. It was great really - much better than the grey and without the speckle problems with the tan. 

Just a couple adjustments to go, then varnish, frame and delivery tomorrow!

More Experimenting

As with the last piece, the portrait of Obama, this drawing is done on white pastelbord with a watercolor pencil underpainting and then a build up of dry colored pencil on top. I actually took photos of the steps and deleted them by accident, so sorry about that!

This piece is successful in some ways and not in others. I should have left that vase all the way to the right out to create a less balanced, or I should say a more as symmetrically balanced, composition. I've named it "Regular Intervals" because it was just a simple experiment to line the objects to feel like they were equidistant apart.

The technique though I think was successful. I wish you could see what it looks like better. Not only is this a poor photo (with a portion out of focus) but you just can't appreciate the subtle textures as in real life. Usually I work with just a dry application on the Pastelbord, and keep the sand paper like even texture all over the piece. This new technique (for me) has a more "painterly feel" where you can see brush strokes, and just a bit more depth in the pencil itself. Also, since it is on white board instead of colored, I can reach a better range of values. The drawings on colored board always has the lightest lights knocked back by the influence of the board color. I think I'll throw in a few of these now and again. I'd love to know what you think of the new technique!

So I noticed quite a few of you mentioned liking the vertical still-lifes I've done. I'll try to make more of those. I find those compositions so challenging that I get tuckered out after doing one!

One nice bit of info I just found out - you can get podcasts from all the major art museums for free and download them super easily in the Ipod store. So glad I found this out - now I'll have something to listen to while I draw besides Harry Potter over and over!

Thanks for looking and if you read all of that, reading too!

Three Little Pears

Three Little Pears
6" x 18"
$650


I spoiled myself a bit for my birthday and bought myself 2 72 count sets of Derwent Coloursoft pencils and a bunch of replacement colors for ones I use all the time. I just love these pencils and I was getting worried when I saw that Dick Blick was out of many of their open stock colors. That feeling of needing to stock up over came me! I received the box of them last night and did this picture of the pears using only the new pencils - I usually mix the coloursofts with prismacolors. The experience was good but felt odd as I know the prismacolor colors so well I can pick them up without thinking.

This is the first time I added steam! It just needed something in that open space behind the tea and I didn't want another object. I was worried about the composition thinking it would be weird with the flowers cut off but I'm pretty happy with it. The teacup is the obvious focal point with the steam and extra contrast. Also the eye seems to travel out with the flowers and tea pot sput but comes back in with the pitcher on the right and go right back to the tea.

Ooh as I'm writing this the buzz buzz buzz national weather service has just issued a severe thunderstorm warning. Amazing I'm not unloading groceries from the car as that's where I usually am during storms! Its been storming pretty much all day and is sticky hot outside while I've been happily sitting at the kitchen table drawing right next to the air conditioner in the window.... bliss...