Author: -N-

1st Colored Pencil Class

Nothing like learning a few things! I’ve drawn with colored pencils on a very causal basis, but what I learned today included: use of Saral, a waxy transfer paper; use of burnishing and blending pencils. Never heard of those before today, but used all three.

Where to begin? I got there 30 minutes late – I thought class began at 9:30 but, no, 9:00. Oh, well.

Subject was a rose. Place the Saral between the picture you are going to use as reference and the paper you are going to draw upon – like carbon paper. Press hard to be sure it is on the drawing surface. Then, remove the Saral, and use a rubber eraser to blot the lines. This lightens them so you can still see them, but not so dark they are obvious. The paper we used had a bit of tooth, to catch the colors, and we worked from light to dark, white to reds and pinks and into the greens of the leaves. The suggestion was to moosh up a background to keep the rose from floating in space, so I did.

When I got home, I was interested in trying my hand on different papers. I have some bristol paper, which is a very smooth and very white paper.

This paper is so, so smooth that it is actually slick. As a result, colors are blended into one another very easily. I think the Prismacolor Premier pencils may be too soft for this paper and a harder, oil-based pencils, such as Polychromos, may be better suited for bristol.

The next experiment was done on some of my MiTeintes pastel paper; here, a mid-blue. I sketched directly onto the paper, using a very pale yellow pencil to create the general shapes as well as limn in the lights and darks. I decided to look at values the best I could, as well as whether they values tended toward warm or cold. The sunlight was dappled on the leaves, with some bright yellow green, and other a deep, blue-green tending toward black.

Out of all of these, I like the galangal the best. I like it because I had gotten a better sense of how to use the colored pencils, learning some of their characteristics and qualities. The blue background adds to the picture. The light and dark colors worked pretty well, and remembering to use complementary colors to dull down shadow areas I think kept the vibrancy. So, for a yellow-green leaf, the shadow colors were a purplish red, or a layer or two of each.

I don’t know if colored pencils will become a big love in my life, but I do enjoy drawing. My Pencil Portrait class was a real joy. I think I learned a lot in it, and moving to colored pencils is interesting. Shades of grey in graphite now are translated (or attempted to be translated) into values in color – something that is very, very challenging for me.

Sliding into Home Plate . . .

It seems that these past two months have been about craziness. Or cascade effects – one thing leading to another.

I got my sewing cabinet by paying for it and leaving 3 weeks between purchase and delivery. To make it work I had to move a book case and a tansu; the book case to the garage, the tansu to the studio. To put the book case into the garage meant at least 5 trips to the Goodwill donation site, and moving around and discarding more crap than anyone else should be allowed to have. To put the tansu into the studio meant moving photography equipment into the garage and into the studio, taking up the space of a displaced book case.

To move stuff into the studio meant moving stuff out of the studio, consolidating art and photography supplies, moving books into the living room.

To make more room in the garage for book cases and photography stuff meant moving boxes of books from the garage into the living room. Boxes of books in the bedroom closet leapt out and moved into the living room as well. A call to the book buyer meant setting up a date for him to come by, and sorting out 25 boxes of keep and sell. Most were sell. Two book cases in the living room joined the sell pile, as did 3/4 of a book case in the family room.

The living room became the unliving room.

Meanwhile, the sewing cabinet was delivered and set up. Next, figuring out how to position it – facing the wall? facing the sliding doors? (The latter won out.)

Time for the book buyer. He arrived. He bought. I threw in what he didn’t want to buy. Now the living room is once more a room with room, and only one book case full of books.

In this mix, a quilting class is ongoing, my Pencil Portrait class ended, my painting continues, and a colored pencil drawing class begins tomorrow. I have to put together my drawing box with supplies for a new class, some different things, some new things, some old things. The class begins tomorrow at 9:30 a.m., and like the good kiddie I am, I want to be ready for the first day of school.

The finale came this morning. I took to the road, to a real, live, professional office store 30 miles away and got the last item: the chair for the sewing cabinet. Not some rinky-dink piece of junk, but a real chair that should last a long time, and keep me comfy for hours of sewing. Mine is the one in the middle.

Finally, time for a breath, coffee, step out to admire the flowers, and then tidy up all that was left in chaos these past few days.

I have room on my book shelves, closet space, living room space, sewing space, art space, and enough room in the garage to swing a cat under the full moon.

More still needs be done, such as hanging pictures and more garage purging, but the big struggle is done. Time now to settle in and see how it all works out.

Yay!

Under the Trees into the Unknown

I have not been too much into cameras or photography for weeks, but with the weather changing and my garage getting straightened up (a months long project!), at least I am finding an interest in something other than my messy house!

An element of mystery always catches me when on this trail. It is not through a particularly dramatic landscape, but its overgrowth always enchants me. As evening falls, it is the stuff of dreams or fairy tales or nightmares.

I will leave you to your imagination.

Magnolia Blossom

The last day of my Pencil Portrait class was last Wednesday morning, and it was a rather sad time for me. I have learned so much. The next session will be in the classroom, on a morning which is not good for me. Interestingly, by happenstance, by good luck, I came home and found out that a colored pencil drawing class begins this coming Thursday! Thursdays are always open in my schedule . . . . Email can be great – if you read it!

I am not sure what to expect from a colored pencil class, much less in a socially distanced and masked classroom. Hopefully it will work out well, and the teacher will be logical and good. It is not often that you see such an offering as more traditional media classes are apt to be offered.

In my library I have a few books on colored pencils, so I dug them out. One that is really a rather interesting one is called “Creative Colored Pencil Workshop” by Carlynne Hershberger and Kelli Money Huff. It combines pencils with other media. The magnolia blossom is a quick take on one of their very first studies. I like to warm up so I will be doing a bit of colored pencil drawing over the next few weeks, but plan to really continue to work on painting in gouache and / or watercolor as well.