Friday, July 25, 2008

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.

2 comments:

hbedrosian said...

You mean it's not finished? It doesn't look like you are struggling at all. I think that this piece will be very marketable - it's beautiful, and I'd love to hand it in my house!

By the way, what size is it?

Kendra said...

I think the image looks better than the original that's why I'm working on it some more. The size is @ 11x15". I appreciate the compliments!