Debbi Friedman’s Blog

So how does the drawing look with the dark-eyed junco popped in?  Not only is the bird in place, but I tweaked several areas of the snow, adding some bits of debris or grass here and there, darkening shadows, etc.  It’s been over a year since I’ve drawn a bird, and while most of my work probably looks detail “spot-on”, it’s not, and birds really have to be spot-on.  I forgot how mildly tedious they can be to draw.

This is a common scene around New England in the winter, so much so that I take these little snow birds for granted.  They start returning from their breeding grounds up north in late October/early November.  I have yet to see one this fall.

It’s on to something new, but I really have so idea what just yet.  I’m playing around with some ideas and photos I took last year.  It’s too noisy in my studio right now to work up there – we’re having our roof replaced, and since my studio is on the top floor, well you can figure out the rest.  And every window seems to have a roofer outside it, looking in.  What’s that about?!?!!?

I wanted to post a photo of this stage of my current drawing – I’m almost finished with the tree stump and snow, and about ready to start on the dark-eyed junco.  This piece is about 19 x 13 inches in size, and I’m pleased with how quickly the detailed stump has gone.  I know I’ll have to go back and forth with the snow contours once the bird is in place, and tweak some of the bark areas and shadows.  It’s been interesting to draw  the detailed snow and stump areas of the foreground and the less focused snow and stump areas of the background.

This is the first post of my current drawing, a dark-eyed junco perched atop a snow-covered tree stump.  I’m approaching this drawing in an entirely different manner than usual.  First of all, I’m not using any watercolor based colored pencils to build up areas before moving onto dry pencil.  Secondly, I usually work top to bottom, left to right when doing a bird drawing, but this time I’ve filled the huge area of the stump, and am working more from bottom to top, right to left.  I have no idea why I began working this way on this drawing, but I’m enjoying the process and the change.  It’s pretty evident where the detailed areas and flat areas meet.

I built up basic flat areas of lighter and darker wood tones, and am subsequently going back into them with tape and a pencil and removing highlights and texture.  Then I’m following up with more detail with darker pencils, and in some cases varying wood tones where I might have removed too much base color with the tape.  It’s looking very detailed, but in reality it’s just a different way of creating detail, and I like the quickness and freedom of this method.  The snow is also done in a much looser and quicker manner,  loosely layering various colors (French Gray 10%, Grayed Lavander, Slate Gray, Cool Gray %70, and then surrounding wood colors) over a white base of colored pencil.

The bird will be the last part to draw, and it’s difficult to see where it’s going to sit at present.  I think one can just make out faint delineations of the wings in the upper right area.

Finally here is my latest drawing.  I wanted to have it done before I went to the CPSA convention from July 28th through August 1st in San Jose, CA, but it just didn’t work out timing-wise.  This drawing is about the same size as the other pieces in this series (a. 15 x 21 inches and done on Rtistx board), but it’s exploring some slightly different aspects of the stones in water, glass reflections, and color distortions, with less clear boundries.  I find it challenging not to tighten up all of the edges of transitions, and had to force myself to put the drawing at arm’s length and study it more than I usually do.

I’m starting a new drawing of a bird in a winter setting – a dark-eyed junco perched on a crusty snow-covered tree stump.   I’m in the mood for a change at the moment, and haven’t done a bird drawing in over a year.  It’s amusing to think of drawing a winter scene as we are in the midst of one of the most beautiful, hot and dry summers that New England has seen in recent years.

It’s been a busy summer with lots of travel and several exhibitions including my artwork.  Although my pieces were not juried into the 18th International CPSA Exhibition, I have had work in the following shows and magazines these past few months:

• Academic Artists Association’s 60th National Juried Exhibition,  April-May 2010, recipient of the Windsor Newton Award for Graphics
• Connecticut Academy of Fine Art’s 99th Annual Juried Exhibition, May-July 2010
• Academic Artists Association’s Annual Members Exhibition, July 2010, recipient of the Art Patron Award
• Attleboro Arts Museum’s “Seeing Double”, a National Juried Exhibtion, July-August 2010
• The Artists Magazine, July/August 2010 issue, “The Artist’s Life” Column, Award Winners of the 2010 On-line Media Competition, first place in Graphics for “Amber Bowl”

and these upcoming exhibitions:

• Academic Artists Association’s 60th Anniversary Invitational Exhibition, September-October 2010
• Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club, Inc. 114th Annual Juried Exhibition, October 2010

Thanks for following my blog!  – Debbi

My husband and I recently went on a nine day trip through parts of Ireland, and one of the absolute highlights was staying at the Dromoland Castle in Newmarket-on-Fergus  and participating in a private falconry walk.  David Atkinson  runs the Dromoland School of Falconry, and has an amazing array of birds of prey available for walks, educational talks and more.  More can be learned about it at:  Dromoland School of Falconry.  These photos show the castle, David walking through the grounds with Bruce, and Bruce the Harris Hawk standing on my gloved hand.  It was such a thrill to have Bruce alight on the glove.  David would make sure to put a chicken leg on the glove (or some other poultry body part) and Bruce would eat the tidbit the moment he landed.  He was so quick I never got to see him actually eat it.  We also got to see several Peregrine Falcons, a Great Gray Owl, a Barn Owl and a Long Eared Owl.

We spent the last three days of our trip in Dublin, which is a wonderful city and easy to walk around.  One afternoon we came across this store, Read’s, and since they have colored pencils prominently displayed in their street window, we decided to take a look inside.  Wasn’t it a thrill to find the Derwent Graphite Soft tin with my drawing on it sitting the shelves.  Please indulge me, it’s quite a hoot to see a little bit of one’s artwork in a foreign country!

I am very excited to have this drawing at it’s completion!  It’s actually been finished since the end of last week, but as usual, I have spent a little time tweaking it here and there to tidy up some edges and colors, etc.  I particularly love the area where the rocks and water line meet and all of the complexities of those interactions.  Now it’s on to trying to come up with a name for this piece.  That’s one of my more challenging tasks.  I usually end up using somewhat mundane sounding titles, basically they help me to know which piece it is, but I find it difficult to convey much more than that in a title.  Any comments or suggestions from other artists out there?

I’m moving on quickly to a new piece, and will write more about that when it’s underway.  Meanwhile, it’s been a busy spring with several shows going on in the New England area.  Lapis Light was just accepted into the Connecticut Academy of Fine Art’s 99th Annual Juried Show, which is up at the Mystic Arts Center (Mystic, CT) from May 28th to July 17th.  More information can be found at either of these websites:  Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts or Mystic Arts Center.

One of my favorite little drawings, Nocturne at Sea, is currently hanging in the Academic Artists Association’s Annual Member’s Exhibition, and was awarded the “Art Patron’s Award”.

Happy upcoming summer to all, and thanks for checking out my blog!

With the the glass vase complete it’s on to the really fun stuff! But as I write that I should note that the vase isn’t really finished.  Already since I’ve taken this photograph I’ve deepened some areas where it interfaces with the rocks.  But the fun stuff it watching it all pull together and come alive as each stone is drawn.  I start with the darkest stones and move on to the lightest; and in this drawing, the darkest stones are the three on the bottom.  I like the way the glass and reflections have developed, but it won’t really pull together until it’s all in place, and one can see why certain reflections are where they are.

I’ve been working on this new drawing for about four weeks and the background and top of the glass vase are almost done.  It’s a large drawing (about 20 x 15 inches) on Bristol Board, and it’s interesting to switch back to a flat paper surface after working on the textured Rtistx for a couple of pieces.  I have to be very careful to leave the whiter/lighter areas intact, as there’s no going back once they go too dark.  On the sanded surface, you can keep changing the color, adding whites or light tones on top of darks, nothing is a problem.  But on paper that type of option is lost very quickly.  I started the background by layering two to four different shades of Caran D’ache Aquarelle pencil colors and then blending the colors with a wet brush.  Then I started in with Prismacolor pencils, first using Limepeel, then Grass Green, Olive Green, Peacock Green, Black Cherry and some Dark Umber.  Certain lighter places have some Yellow Ochre in them, and most places (except the darkest darks) are burnished with a pale light blue.  I know it’s not the most simplistic approach, but I love the color transparencies that one can achieve by layering this way.

My drawing “Amber Bowl” is currently in the Academic Artist Association’s 60th Annual National Exhibition in Springfield, MA, and was awarded the Windsor-Newton Award.  The big red letter day fast approaching for all of us colored pencil artists is the announcement of the jurying results for this year’s  CPSA International Exhibition, which will be made public on April 26th.

I’m very excited to share this new drawing in my Stones series.  Will you look at those colors!  It’s so stunning when the  pale, discreet colors of the rocks become submerged in water.  This still life has a straight above, bird’s eye view, and the bowl is cropped; in comparison to the Amber Bowl, which is viewed slightly at an angle, and the bowl is entirely contained in the composition.  As a result, in this piece the water is less prominent, but different and  interesting aspects are created.  I had so much fun exploring the different ways light and reflection danced around the piece.

I’m starting a graphite drawing of stones reflecting in a mirror, and planning to resume work on the last oil painting I posted a while back.  It’s been sitting on the back burner (in this case, my studio easel) for too long!

My colored pencil drawing “Amber Bowl” was awarded First Place in the Graphite, charcoal and colored pencil category of the Artists Magazine’s On-Line All Media competition.  I am so honored to receive this recognition for my work, especially as there are so many fine entries for them to judge from.  I spoke with Chris McHugh, the Managing Editor of The Artists Magazine, who told me that there were over 1,800 entries this year.  You can see all of the first place winners and honorable mention award winners at The Artists Magazine.

In spite of my lack of blog entries lately I have been working hard.  I’m planning to post a photograph of my latest drawing, last written about  on February 11th, by next Monday.  So please check back soon!

Here is an installment after two weeks of work.  I approached the beginning of this drawing in the same fashion as the still-life that I featured in my blog post of October 15, 2009.  I worked in the background first, and then started in on the bowl from the outside in.  This will leave the rocks and water for last.  I’m  having a lot of fun working on this, but there is a challenge in the colors, as I’m slightly tweaking the color to a more “blueish” shade than a more “purple-ish” shade. There are no blacks in the drawing, so the darks are made by layering blues, purples and browns.  I am so excited to move on to the reflections that continue on the glass down into the water.

When I start a new drawing on paper, I jump right in and start laying out the drawing directly on the drawing surface.  Not so with a sanded surface, such as the Rtistx board I’m using for my new drawing of stones in a bowl of water.  The sanded surface is nearly impossible to erase lines from, so I follow a system that seems to work well for me, and I think many artists must do very much the same.  (I would be most interested to hear what others do when laying out a drawing on Ampersand Pastel board, Rtistx, or a sanded paper – so feel free to share!)

My first step is to create a basic line drawing – not too detailed, but everything in it’s place, on drawing paper at actual size, as below.

Then I make a copy of this drawing onto a piece of tracing paper, as follows.

Next I take the tracing paper drawing and layer it on top of the Rtistx board, with a piece of transfer paper in between, to offset the drawing onto the board.

Below is the finished product, a transferred line drawing of my future drawing on the piece of Rtistx board.

I’ve been working on this piece for a week and making good progress, so my next post will include a recent photo of the drawing.  To close I wanted to share something that  I discovered for the first time, which I know many other colored pencil artists have experienced. . . . inconsistent product color.  As you can see in the photo below, both pencils are Prismacolor Grayed Lavender, but the lead color is quite different.  Fortunately I had several pencils of each, varying shade and was able to continue without difficulty.  But it was a head’s up for me to always check the consistency of color when changing pencils.

Okay, it’s not very often that I will unabashedly state that I love one of my drawings.  I love this drawing!  I was so skeptical when I started it that it was going to amount to anything.  If you look at the last post, you can see that the prelimary background work is nebulous.  There is still some detail to be added to a couple of rocks, but the combination of the paper color, background work, rock tones, and glass reflections have combined, in my opinion, to make one of my more interesting rock drawings.

I welcome any comments or critiques!  I’m on to a new oil painting – a small 8″ x 10″ panel of a rock still life.  I want to make it have a very “jewel-like” appearance.  I want to do two more oils and then assess where I am with this series.

I’ve started a new drawing and I find it interesting to note how different my approach is to this one compared to a similar one I recently completed.  Both are of stones in glass vases, but in the first one I drew the rock and glass first and the background last.  With this newest drawing I executed the background first, then moved on to the glass vase, and saved the rocks and vase interior for last.  This drawing also contains a water element; the rocks are resting in water in the vase.  In the first drawing there isn’t any water.  I’ve posted the comparable stage post below.

The new drawing is almost complete, and I’ll be posting a photograph of it soon!  Listening to books on tape/CD is really helping my output, especially when the genre is mystery/thriller.  I can’t stop working and can’t wait to get back to work . . . .

Here is a photograph of the latest drawing I’ve been working on – an array of stones.  I really did get them to balance like that!  My friend, the photographer Jan Reiss, dubbed me “Andrea Goldsworthy”.  I love environmental art – organic matter arranged in nature and then photographed, or visited before it vanishes.  The colors of the stones have been accentuated, but they only take on a more pronounced hue of the color they really are.

I’ve started another drawing on Canson Mi-Tientes, and am off to buy more art supplies tomorrow to start a new oil painting.  I spent several days this past week attempting to stage and photograph ideas I have in my head.  Does anyone else find that they get these glimpses in their imagination of what they want to create, only to find it so difficult to try and create the vision in real life?  It’s almost like operating in a dream state, and it’s very frustrating.  Maybe I’ll get better at it, but I did manage to accomplish some semblance of my ideas. . . .we’ll see where it takes me.  Any tips or advice from anyone?

I think this drawing is finished!  It’s larger (14.5 x 19.5 inches) and more finished than the previous drawings in the stones series, and I’m very happy with the outcome.   I would probably still be working on the background had I not switched from paper to Rtistx board for a surface.  I used a lot of watersolubles to lay down initial layers of color, and tried to let the variations (specifically  in the background) show through for some movement and basically a less neat and/or perfect look.   It was a lot of fun to draw the water in the bowl and what happens between the rocks and the lighting, which I may play around with in future pieces.  But for now I think I’m going to move onto trying out some ideas in oils.

Several posts ago I mentioned that I had started a large stone drawing, only to find that it was going to take forever to complete if I continued on the Canson Mi-tientes I had started on.  I bought some Rtistx board and started over, ran out of needed colors of Derwent Inktense pencils for the color wash background, and started a small graphite piece while waiting for the shipment of pencils.  Here’s a photo of this piece that I finished last week.  It’s done with graphite pencils and light layers of Derwent Graphitints in some of the stones.  I wanted it to have a bit of the feel of a hand-colored photograph.  I’m well underway with the larger piece and an really having fun pulling it together.  More on that one later!

Finally!  I can’t believe two weeks has gone by since my last post, but it really has been a busy time.  We had a wonderful week of scuba diving in Curacao and man is it hot at the equator in August!  There are so many wonderful birds down there on the island including Venezualan Trupial, Yellow Orioles, Brown Pelicans, Brown Footed Boobys, Yellow Warblers and my new favorite island bird, the Bananaquit.  These little birds, called “Honey Bears” by the locals, come up to your dining table and try to fly away with sugar packets, drink your orange juice, or scrounge fruit off your plate.  We took to feeding them (for photographic purposes, of course!) and as the week progressed we found that a nice piece of watermelon with some raw sugar on top was just the trick for attracting lots of birds.  Check out the photos below.

Okay, one more vacation photo, just one more. . . . promise.  I couldn’t resist putting this guy on here.  My son found this iguana resting in the shade of it’s self-dug hole in the midday heat.

On to my drawing, which I finished today.  I really like this one, but like most things I work on, I feel too close to it right now to see it clearly.  I am really enjoying developing this body of work, which is surprising to me, as I originally thought of doing perhaps one or two rock drawings.

I’ve already started the layout of the next piece, which will be much larger than the previous drawings in this series.  I’ve been keeping them to approximately 9 x 12 inches in size, either horizontally or vertically.  I’ve decided to work larger on this particular drawing, and am starting out with dimensions of 15 x 20, although it may change some with the cropping for framing.  I going for a more dramatic presence and lighting with the new piece, and I think increasing the scale will help accentuate that.

Here is the finished version of “Balancing Act”.  I have actually grown to like the green paper and the way colors of the rocks look on it.  It was, however, very difficult to achieve certain colors with the green as a background – and difficult to create as many subtle gradations as is possible on the tan or blue backgrounds.  Any comments about this, or anything regarding the drawing, are most welcome!

Most of these drawings are approximately 9 x 12 (or 12 x 9) inches in size.  I’m going to start a smaller drawing in graphite on white paper of a stone with another object, and then return to working on the colored papers.

I’ve almost finished this drawing of rocks which I have entitled “Fault Line”.  As is usually the case with my posts, there are areas that aren’t complete and need more development and tweaking – the two red rocks, the white rock and the broken granite rock.

I’ve already developed my next idea for this rock series and am eager to move along, so I hope to finish this drawing tomorrow.