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 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!

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!

]]> http://dlfriedman.com/myblog/2010/03/08/latest-drawing-is-complete-2/feed/ 8 http://dlfriedman.com/myblog/2010/02/11/azure-bowl-work-in-progress-stage-two/ http://dlfriedman.com/myblog/2010/02/11/azure-bowl-work-in-progress-stage-two/#comments Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:05:30 +0000 Debbi http://dlfriedman.com/myblog/?p=689

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.

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.

Here is a new painting I’ve started, a “rock slide”.  I set this up inside an antique wooden crate, and lined the back of the crate with some very dark paper.  The top photograph shows very initial oil washes to reinforce the pencil layout.  The second photograph shows a second layer of oil washes, with the paint applied a bit more opaquely.  I want to explore painting varying shades of white tones in this piece, so I have started to separate the rocks from one another by mixing different shades of greys.

I’m also going to be starting a large colored pencil piece on Rtistx board tomorrow, and I’m very excited about this one!  More on that soon.

I’m also working on getting details together to have my website updated.  I can’t quite believe it hasn’t been updated since May of 2009.  More information will follow on that – specifically when a new “gallery” page is in place of my new stones pieces.

Happy New Year to all!  I can’t believe it’s been over a month since my last entry.  It was a busy and fun holiday season, especially with my older son home from college and all of us together as a family, but I’m glad it’s over and we can move back into our “normal” schedules and closer to spring.

I’ve been working on this small oil (8″ x 10″) and while it’s still not finished, it’s nearing completion.  It’s difficult to paint a very white rock, and I’m finding that getting the subtle, embedded color variations requires lots of layering.  I have also started another oil painting of stones, and done an artists trading card for the first time.  It’s very interesting to work on such a small scale, and seems to require an entirely different way of thinking about composition and scale.

I still have a couple more ideas for oils and drawings in this series.  I want to do at least one large oil (approximately 3′ x 4′) and see what that brings to the table, so to speak.  I used to work at that size and larger, so it will be fun to try it again.

I hope the New Year is going well for everyone, and would love to hear from any and all with a comment!

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.

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