Debbi Friedman’s Blog

“Spirit Stones”, colored Pencil and Graphite, 17.5″ x 13″

I am delighted and honored to have received the CPSA Great Explorations Award for Exceptional Achievement in the Explore This! 9 Exhibition for my drawing, Spirit Stones, shown above.  This is my first acceptance into this particular CPSA show, and I was stunned to receive news in the mail of the award.  There are fifty three wonderful pieces of artwork currently on-line from February 1 through January 31, 2013 in the show, which can be seen at the CPSA website link here.  All of the art must combine mainly colored pencil with any other media desired, and it’s interesting to see what other artists are doing in this regard.

For “Spirit Stones” I wanted to play around with arranging these stones  in a tall vase and convey some humor at their predicament.  Some appear happy, some perplexed or chagrined, to be suspended in a vase of water staring out at the viewer.

The Cast of Characters

There is also a review of the EXP!9 exhibition on Katherine Tyrell’s Making a Mark blog site.  Katherine writes about the top two awards (Eileen Sorg, CPSA, CPX having received the EXPY Award and the Prismacolor Best of Show Award for her wonderful piece, “Foiled Again”):

“I took a look at the artwork before reviewing the award winners and I have to say I wasn’t at all surprised by either of the two top awards as these were both pieces which prompted me to stop and look longer.  I think it’s also very interesting to see how big an impact can be achieved through the use of understated and almost monochromatic colour – particularly when there is a level of content to the artwork which goes beyond keen observation and impeccable technique.

It’s also worth noting that both pieces contained humour – and I’m always keen to applaud those who meet the challenge of including humour in a subtle way.”

“Spirit Stones” is the second drawing I’ve done with stones that have suggestions of facial parts on their surfaces.  The first drawing, “Stone Faced”, was done for the CPSA Silent Auction last summer in Covington, KY, in conjunction with the annual convention.

Stone Faced, Colored Pencil on Canson Mi-Tientes

I’ve been collecting all sorts of stones for years; sometimes I’m looking for certain colors or shapes, or struck by finding stones with lines encircling them.  I’m always on the lookout for stones with faces or mouths in them, and not all make it into my drawings.  The stone below was calling out for a face, and now resides in my studio with other found objects I’m fond of.

Currently my website is being redesigned, and I’m excited to have the new site go live.  I have approximately twenty drawings that aren’t on my current site, and the new format will display everything much better.  I’ll announce the new site when it’s ready, and as always, thanks for reading!

I finished this graphite drawing, titled “Front Side/Back Side” over a week ago, and have been tending to art business details in the interim.  I guess it should be pretty evident that this stone is reflected in a mirror, so one can see two sides (or more, since more than one side is showing on the rock in the foreground).  In this series I always aspire to do a companion piece to each drawing, an opposite of sorts.  For this one, I envision drawing a whiter rock on a darker background with a mirror image.  But I’ve moved on to a yet larger colored pencil still life of stones in a vase with water, seen from straight on, rather than a bird’s eye view.  It has a lot of green in it – I’m so happy it’s spring!

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!

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been working on a little graphite drawing, and here it is.  It’s a very simple and  zen-like composition.  A black stone used in hot stone therapy that was given to me by a masseuse,  a small peacock feather, placed upside down atop the stone and some shadows are all that composes the drawing.  It’s small – maybe about 7″ x 7″.

I’m eager to move onto the next drawing in my rock series, and plan to try and incorporate water in the drawing.  Coincidentally, I’m just back from the 17th Annual Exhibition and Convention of the Colored Pencil Society of America, where I took a workshop with CPSA Artist Pat Averill on the power of water. . . entitled “Unleash the power of water in your drawings”.  Below are two photographs from the workshop: one of friends Dee Overly (left) and Mari Kaye Moehl (right) working on one of the four projects we tackled that day, and the other of workshop instructor Pat Averill.  I’m not sure that the workshop concepts will transfer to my drawing, but you never know!  We worked on the distortion of images in reflected water, drawing moving water (ie – surf), drawing water moving over rocks, and looking at wet sand to dry sand within the context of a seascape.