Almost finished

I worked on this piece for a few more hours today. I found that burnishing helped smooth out the pencil problems that I was having. Its jut about done now, I only have the sky left to work on and maybe the underside of the umbrella needs more depth.

Cafe in Santorini

I have been looking at my photos of this cafe in Santorini Island in Greece @ 3 yrs ago and thinking about doing a colored pencil piece ever since. I love all the fun elements in the cafe; the leaning candle sticks, the toys for children, the books to read and the scraggily geraniums growing in the heat. It looks like such a peaceful place to sit in the shade (it was a dreadfully hot day).

I chose to work this drawing on rag illustration board; and I'm not sure what brand but it is taking the colored pencil layers terribly. If I apply too many layers, I'm getting a thick waxy build up with little pills of wax on the paper. I can actually scrape them off with an exacto knife. The small elements in the foreground are going on well, its the larger walls and sky in the background that I'm having trouble laying the color evenly. So I decided to apply solvent to dissolve the pencil and make it flow more easily. However, even the solvent is sitting on the surface and not still not smoothing out the pencil. Oh well, this piece has been a challenge and will continue to be ... I'll just keep experimenting with it.

Back to work

After participating in Nicole Caulfield's mini workshop of working on pastel board at our district chapter of CPSA May meeting, I decided to try working on the pastelboard. The size is 12x12" and the background color of the board is gray. I've been out on our boat quite a bit so I'm inspired by all the sailboats that I see. I'm working from photos that I took of sailboats one evening at sunset. My palette is primarily blues, purples and pinks so I'm throwing in a few reds, greens (turquoise) and yellows here and there to create some zing!

Studio Update

This is my new studio, presently. It looks a little empty, doesn't it? Where is all the artwork?! Between getting the studio finished and dealing with a few health issues with my dad, my artwork has been put to the side. I hope to be back in the groove by next week.

I'm in a colored pencil book!

I just received a copy of this book in which I have 4 pieces of artwork displayed and I'm really excited. This is the first time my work has been published in a book! Above, is an image of the cover and also one of the inside pages containing my work. The cherries on the upper left and the group of pears on the upper right are both my work.