Time is slipping by all too quickly and I've been spending a lot of time on this drawing while getting a bit anxious as I look at the calendar and realize I only have two months left to prepare for my exhibit at the Providence Art Club. October will be here too soon and I still find myself with several more drawing ideas that I hope to complete.
For this drawing, I chose the photo reference from the seemingly hundreds of photos I took while in Budapest in May. A few of us had just finished coffee one mid afternoon and were walking down a narrow street when a woman walked into a cafe directly in front of us and sat down in the window. The sunlight was falling over the building tops and down at a sideways slant and illuminated her so perfectly. The amazing play of light and dark but also the sense of intimacy of the figure had us photographers were clamoring all over each other to get the perfect shot. And thank goodness this woman didn't turn around, she would have thought we were all nuts jumping over each other pointing cameras in her direction.
Now I have been working on this approximately 24x24" drawing over the past few weeks trying to capture what I saw on the street in Budapest. I've taken out irrelevant details and played up the contrast of lights and darks keeping the surrounding window and broken wall but hoping they won't detract. The surface is UArt 800 grit archival sanded paper which is very textured, lots of texture is still showing through the dark areas. I like this paper because of it's gritty surface, it takes pencil color quickly but the textured lines in the paper can be challenging. I find Polychromos pencils work best and are easily blended or burnished with a bristle brush to smooth out the drawing. But I also like to add Prismacolor pencils which are more distinct and waxy and Prismacolor Verithin which have harder points to fill in small areas.
(My camera has distorted some of the straight lines in this picture of my drawing, the woodwork and trim around the window and wall aren't warped as they appear.)
4 comments:
This is awesome! And thank you for describing your process. You are so innovative and it's exciting to see what new methods you're experimenting with! They always turn out beautifully!
Kendra, this is amazing! So much feeling and emotion and I also love that it tells a story! Beautiful.
I love to read your descriptions of the travel scenes you photographed. You bring us right to the scene. Also, I love to read how you have decided on which paper and what kind of pencils to use, especially helpful while I am exploring new materials with a Landscape as Portrait class combined with Nature Lab. I turn to your blog for a lot of guidance as I want to work these materials to their best advantage. One of our assignments is to bring in images of work by other artists we admire. I am submitting your name to the class as one to follow. Hope this is OK with you!
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