Monday, April 4, 2011

Splendor

Splendor is the title I chose for my "bowl of cherries" colored pencil piece. I've been working on and off for a month, especially on intricate patterns in the glass dish. As I mentioned previously, I used several brands of pencils; Prismacolor, Derwent Coloursoft, Luminance, Lyra Rembrandt and Prismacolor Verithin. The surface is Rtistx board which is a sanded surface so I began with the Prismacolor and Coloursoft pencils which are softer, especially the reds which are very soft pigment. On top of the softer pencils I filled in the textured surface and burnished with the Lyra Rembrandt pencils and Luminance. I especially liked the Luminance white for burnishing the white patterns in the dish. It was just hard enough and opaque enough to cover the surface perfectly. I used some of the Verithin pencils, especially the Tuscan Red to burnish the dark shadowed area behind the cherries.

I needed to render the cherries in a slightly different way to make them pop off the surface and not compete with the intricate dish pattern so I added solvent to the pencil. By adding solvent I dissolved layers of pencil so that it is applied in a thick layer. When it was dry, I added a top layer of lighter red Prismacolor and Coloursoft pencils to really make those cherries pop.

The finished size is 14x17", varnished and framed without glass in a warm silver frame and linen liner. This piece is going to Bristol Art Gallery for my solo exhibit Eye Candy 2 opening this Saturday, April 9.

5 comments:

Anne Winthrop Cordin said...

This is exciting,rich and definately eye popping candy! Can't make your opening, but will be sure to get to your show while its up. Congrats!

Siti Nuriati Husin said...

This is truly a great painting. I really love your work - :)

Dianna Wallace Soisson said...

Beautiful Kendra! You really know how to apply those reds!! Good luck on your solo exhibit. I'm sure that you'll do fine!

wandamarie said...

What a wonderful painting! I really love your technique.

Kendra said...

Thank you so much. When I posted the picture on the blog I said "wow" it did turn out well. Often I'm too critical of my own work.