Beach Stones and Water are Finally Finished

I finally finished this piece and I'm almost reluctant to say that it has taken me two months to complete. I started the piece in January just before my father went into the hospital with the flu and fluid in his lungs. He stayed for a week and then went into a nursing home where he has been since but will be coming home next week. I've been running back and forth first to the hospital and then to the nursing home almost daily. Now I am setting up the 24-hour care he will need when he comes home. He didn't want to have to go to the nursing home and now he doesn't want to pay for care thus, we've been arguing that this has to happen. What do you do when a parent becomes like a child and is totally dependent on you? It's overwhelming. I had been involved in his care previously but now it's become physically and emotionally draining. However, I have worked to get him back to walking, in better spirits and at a point where he can come home with care. Unfortunately, my art took the back seat for the last two months. I taught some classes and tried to get some work done but emotionally it was difficult. Besides this piece, I have also started a large piece on mylar and am going to be handmaking a book with small drawings. I'm excited about both projects and really need to start working on a regular basis, when I get away from my art I feel somewhat lost and very irritable!

Just to review, this drawing is 18x24" on Rtistx 300 Board. I used Prismacolor, Lyra Rembrandt and Faber Polychromos pencils. I wrote details on how I worked the rocks in this previous post. My next step was to continue upward and put in suggestions of more rocks and the sea foam encroaching the rocks. I decided to leave the top left predominantly white, I wanted to keep it somewhat abstract with just suggestions of rocks underneath the flowing water. This piece will be one of the entries I submit to the CPSA national exhibition but I have to title it first. Right now it's untitled and I'm in the though process.

Working on the Beach Stones

I'm continuing my work on the beach stones drawing which is 18x24" on Rtistx board. I've finished the foreground stones, which took me a few weeks because I found I could only concentrate for a few hours at a time because of all the elements and detail. I've been using Polychromos, Prismacolor and Lyra Rembrandt pencils for the rocks. Let me tell you why and what my technique is. The Rtistx board is a sanded surface and I find the Polychromos work best for the first layer of color. After I apply the color, I burnish it with a bristle brush to even out the tone. Polychromos aren't as waxy as other brands so they tend to rub into the paper almost as a pastel stick would. Next I apply layers of Prismacolor and Lyra Rembrandt. The Lyras have an oil base so they don't crumble as much as the Prismacolors. However, I also have to choose my pencils according to the colors I need for the rocks. Because I'm working from the bottom upwards and leaning on my drawing, I will put a piece of clean paper under my arm so I won't smudge the drawing I've already done. I also spray with workable fixative between layers of colored pencil to keep the pencil from lifting or smudging on the board.

After I've applied the color, there are still some areas I want to look smooth but sometimes doesn't because of the sanded board surface. If the rocks look too textured, I hit the surface with a soft brush and some odorless mineral spirits which dissolves the pencil pigment so it moves like paint. I brush it lightly so I get the effect of watercolor paint. One of the brushes I like to use is a Mongolian Sable 1/4" flat from Dynasty Brush Company.

My next step is to continue working towards the top of the drawing where the waves and white foam are encroaching on the stones. The easy part about the top is that much of the board will be left white to show the lightness of the foam.

Beginning and Finishing

I have started a new piece, another drawing of tulips. I seem to be attracted to them lately. This photo I took on my deck of beautiful orange tulips in the blue glass vase. I'm going to add a background which will be a simple band of landscape and a lot of pale blue sky. And once the background is drawn, I will have to readjust color in the tulips so they will come forward. The surface is Rtistx and I am using Prismacolors, Verithins and Lyra Rembrandts.

Here is my paint tube drawing nearly completed. I have stood the drawing up in my studio so I can walk by for the next few days, look at the piece, and decide if it needs anything else. I am usually critical of my own work but I really love this piece and had so much fun portraying the crinkly old tubes of paint.

Three Shiny Apples

I have been asked to create a small colored pencil artwork for the CPSA silent auction fundraiser called "Small Works of Great Magnitude". The silent auction is held during the national convention week and exhibition which is in Dallas, TX July 12-16. The silent auction takes place during the Members' Night on Thursday, July 14 and is to benefit CPSA's exhibition costs. All of the works will be featured on the CPSA website by the end of June. This year there will be 36 wonderful works to bid on and I'm happy to say that I will be attending and can view them all.

For my submission, I chose to draw these candy apples. The size is 7x10" which will be matted to 11x14" which is the maximum size for the small works. I've worked on red Canson Mi Teintes paper and used Prismacolor pencils and Lyra Rembrandt pencils. Because the paper is so textured, the red shows through giving the whole piece an overall warmth. The colors I used for the background are Prismas Imperial Violet and Blue Violet Lake, which make the background look so interesting with the red behind it. I burnished the apples with a bristle brush so they would look shiny and and not textured like the rest of the piece. It was fun to draw and took me about 3 or 4 hours to complete.

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.

Life is Like a Bowl of Cherries ... Or Not

I've been plunged into a situation that was totally unexpected only two months ago. My father was hospitalized for congestive heart failure about 3 weeks ago and while he's back at home now, he needs full time care. I've been living with him for the last two weeks and finding that he not only has heart problems but also memory problems and possibly dementia. I am taking care of his every need, including daily care, coordinating visiting nurses and physical therapy as well as doctor appointments, not to mention the finances and legal things that the artist in me knows little about. This is the second most challenging task I've ever had to do in my life (the first was surviving cancer) and I've had more than one meltdown. As if that wasn't enough, my dad's lady friend died last week so we've dealt with his grief as well as attending the funeral and consoling the family. I am hoping to set up care for my dad within the next week so I can return to teaching my classes and doing my artwork soon. But first I can't wait to just return HOME and sleep in my own BED without having to worry about sleeping with one ear listening to when he wakes up and wanders.

For now I am working on this one colored pencil drawing whenever I have a few hours alone. I should call this piece "My Sanity" because working with my colored pencils is keeping me sane. Right now it looks more like "ghostly" cherries because I am working on the background first. My surface is Rtistx board and I am using a variety of brands of pencils; Prismacolor, Prismacolor Verithin, Derwent Coloursoft, Luminance and Lyra Rembrandt Polycolor pencils. I am not using solvent on the background so I am working first with the Prismacolor Premier Pencils and Derwent Coloursoft and then burnishing with the Lyras and Verithins in order to create a solid surface with none of the textured Rtistx board showing through. I've chosen to render the colorful glass dish and reflection first and when I'm satisfied, I will begin on the cherries. The cherries really have to "pop" off the intricate background so I am waiting until last to tackle them. I will list colors in my next entry.

Tulips Coming to Life

I've been working on this drawing this week and having so much fun with it. As in my last post, I mentioned that I began with the flowers and leaves. I worked them in Prismacolors and Lyra Rembrandts and then added Prismacolor Verithins on top to burnish and fill in areas I wanted to appear solid. I took the original photo on my deck and did not like the background so I played with the image in Photoshop, cut out the vase and tried different backgrounds. It took me several hours of learning how to make it work in Photoshop and choosing a background, but in the end decided on this blue & gray cloudy sky.

I began the background with Periwinkle, Cool Grey 30% and white in the dark and light areas, added solvent and then added several other Cool Greys, Slate Grey, Blue Violet Lake, Imperial Violet, Powder Blue and more white. I blended with the brush and then with my fingers. When I finished the background, I found there was too much of a disparity between the solid paint-like appearance of the sky and the textured pencil application of the flowers. I didn't want to add solvent to the flowers because the solvent sort of mushes the colors together and the petals will lose the transparency of the layers of color showing through each other. So I decided to lightly burnish just about all of the petals and leaves with a colorless blender so that the texture of the board wouldn't show through and they would stand out from the background. It worked and next I am onto the bottom area.