candy apples

I worked this piece on 8x10 RTX300 board. This is a still life of candy apples that I set up outside in my yard. I like the background greens as a complement to the red apples. The dark greens make the red apples pop forward. The apples were done purely with pencil, using hard pencils over soft to burnish and fill in the texture of the board. I worked the background in pencil dissolved with solvent. In parts of the background, I painted with my fingers to blend the color into the board. I think I'm going to frame it in a shadowbox type of frame to allow the edges to show.

Shelly's pears

My friend, Shelly, asked me to do a piece for her that is very similar to the Pears on my website. The other Pears are done on Stonehenge paper, but I chose to work these on 8x10" Ampersand white pastelboard. I chose white to get the luminosity of the light areas on the pears. The background was a bit of a challenge but with solvent and dark pencils I covered the white background. Shelly plans to stand the piece in an easel in her kitchen as it is without framing.