My main focus these days is having the new studio finished shortly so that I can move in along with 4 other artists. Here is a view of my space, its very open and I have two big rows of windows that overlook Easton's Pond and Easton's (1st) Beach in Newport. What beautiful views! The bottom photo is of my side view of Easton's Beach and Cliff Walk in the distance. Very inspiring. Today I'm heading to the studio to paint the walls, all the brush work.
Here is the completed piece. I softened the texture on the plate by burnishing a little with a bristle brush and worked the peppers and tomatillos in order to be very vibrant in color.
I've worked color onto the hot peppers and I am finishing up the green pepper & tomatillos now. The RTX300 surface takes Polychromos pencils very nicely, it has such a nice light texture to work on. The peppers are so vibrant because of the Supracolor pencil underpainting I did first. Next I'm going to turn my attention to smoothing out the surface of the plate so it doesn't look so grainy.
Moving on from the cherries, I've decided to try some colorful hot peppers in a plate. I'm using the Rtistx RTX 300 board especially for colored pencil. After drawing the peppers, I've done a colorful underpainting with Caran d'Arche Supracolor watercolor pencils and water. I want the peppers to be very vibrant because the plate behind them is colorful and I really want the peppers to stand out. I've worked the plate in subtle tones of colored pencil for now. As I work on the peppers I will adjust the values and colors on the plate. My next step is to go back into the peppers with colored pencil.
This is the 12x12" piece I began last month for the Newport Artist Guild Demo. The surface is gessoboard with a coat of Terra Cotta Colourfix primer applied. I worked the colored pencil with solvent in order to apply the color thickly and remove most of the surface texture. I'm now going to varnish this piece and frame it without glass.
I like the qualities of this board. It has an even surface but quite a bit of tooth and takes the colored pencil easily. The colors move around almost like pastel and its easy to work dark to light. The colorful reflections in the cherries captured my eye and my goal was to achieve the bright colors and shiny reflections in the cherries.
