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.

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.

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 . . . .

]]> http://dlfriedman.com/myblog/2009/12/11/533/feed/ 2 http://dlfriedman.com/myblog/2009/08/31/finished-rock-drawing-and-musings/ http://dlfriedman.com/myblog/2009/08/31/finished-rock-drawing-and-musings/#comments Tue, 01 Sep 2009 02:20:33 +0000 Debbi http://dlfriedman.com/myblog/?p=481

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.

Another week and a new rock drawing underway.  Isn’t that green paper wild?  It feels so to me.  I’m not sure I entirely like it, and it’s difficult to control the colors I want for the rocks with the green base.  But it’s fun to experiment with these things, and overall I’m enjoying and liking the drawing.

We’re going to Little Compton, Rhode Island for the weekend, and the beaches are covered with these rocks.  That’s where I collect most of my rocks, and I plan to do some more collecting this weekend.  I’m always looking for interesting shapes, colors and rocks with lines on them, rocks that are very flat, rocks with interesting flaws, rocks that are almost round. . .. .. pretty soon I’m going to have the whole beach in my studio!

Since my younger son is coming home from sleep-away camp today, and I had an unexpected but fun trip to Baltimore last week, I’ve had to reassess my initial thoughts that I might complete 10 drawings this summer.  I realize that’s not possible now, not with going to the CPSA convention at the end of July, and away on a family vacation in August.  But I’m going to do my best to finish them by September 21st or so, which is technically the end of summer.  I have lots of ideas about how to proceed with this series, doing at least one variation piece for each idea, so that there are two ways of looking at, say, the rocks in the glass vase, or the rocks with a split rock, etc.

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.