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.