No Up, No Down

This project is the result of me being a goof-off.  One day, I sat doodling and sketching some basic shapes in my sketch book with no intent whatsoever of doing anything with the project...

About four years later, glancing through my sketch book in an attempt to find a blank page, I ran across my first version of this drawing.  I traced off the drawing so I could have something to work on without actually revising my original, and also to be free of the confines of that dratted sketch book. At that point I decided to rework parts of the sketch and revise the concept somewhat.

When I liked the outline I had, I added colors.  I used Derwent's Inktense and colored pencils from one or two other product lines from the same company.  Again, I failed to keep a record of which colors from which lines were used. I avoided using water in the colored pencil area, even though the brands used are water-soluable. I wanted the texture of the pencils strokes to show. On the original, they do show, quite nicely.

For the background, I used a mixture of watercolor paints that appears to be black, but is not a true black. It is mainly a mix of red, yellow and cobalt blue, but I also added some Indigo to further darken the paints. I then applied the mixture thickly, without much water, as this paper would not stand up to a very wet paint mixture.  Completed about mid-September, 2013, this project is intended to be framed, and could be hung in any desired orientation because I deliberately left off the shadows.

Still Life in Colored Pencil

I had been working on this one several weeks off and on, so once again no clear dating. I should have cleaned up this scan, because the white paper/lack of background shows a lot of stray marks near the top of the page that shouldn't be there.  Oh well... It's not as if this drawing is worth anything more than a record of my progress.

This drawing was done on cheap 8.5 X 11 inch paper with mixed brands of colored pencils.  I didn't keep a record so can't say which colors from which brands made the cut. Somewhere along the line, I lost my highlights on this one, which I repaired by using a white, soft pastel stick.  I'm calling this one finished as of sometime in May of 2013.

Lily - WIP

No doubt I've mentioned that one of my favorite drawing books is Drawing for Dummies by Brenda Hoddinott.  I'll clarify here that I mean the first edition, because there is also a second edition.  The publisher got someone else to do most of the work for the second edition, and used artwork from several contributors, so there's a lot of difference between the two books.

At the end of most chapters in the first edition, there is a project to complete that helps let you know if you've understood the material presented in that chapter.  For Chapter 14, beginning on page 185, the project is titled Lovely Lily.

The lesson as written is done in graphite, but I wanted color, so I used my set of 150 Prismacolor Premier colored pencils after I had achieved an acceptable outline; from that point on, I disregarded the project instructions. I did not complete the shadows or highlights, which are both important and something on which I tend to do substandard work, therefore, I'll label this a WIP... because I can still go back and correct and/or revise the drawing.

The scan you'll see here was done in May, and shows the progress on Lily that I had achieved as of the end of April, 2013. This drawing is on cheap paper, which I cut to 8X10 inches to fit a frame I have on hand. I foolishly disregarded the orientation of the paper when I began to sketch my flower, using the horizontal, or landscape orientation when I could have used the portrait orientation to better advantage, so the version you see here has had the resulting excess white space cropped off of each end for better display.

Wild Poppies

It's been awhile since I posted anything here for the simple reason that I have not finished a drawing or a painting for a very long time.  Or, at least not one that I felt was worthy of inclusion in this blog.  Below is the painting that has changed all that.  Wild Poppies is acrylic on canvas, with silverleaf accents. The original is 11 X 14 inches.  I had fun painting this one.  As usual, you should be able to click the small version to see the full-sized photo of this painting.