Something New

 

Colored Illustration Boards

These beauties came yesterday. I've been waiting to start that screw head drawing because I wanted to have that warm yellow underneath like in the houseboat drawing, but without the texture. It took a while, but I finally found some illustration board that is near to that yellow ochre color I'm after. This photo isn't quite correct, because the color is deeper and warmer than it appears here. If anyone is interested, it is called Bainbridge Hot Press Illustration Board and you can find it here:  https://www.dickblick.com/products/bainbridge-hot-press-illustration-board/

The pencils are colors I tried out from the big set and wanted to add to my own collection. They are Sky Blue Light (a miracle worker) and Black Cherry, Black Grape and Black Raspberry. Honestly, I bought the last three because they sounded so delicious. 

 

Two is for Joy (practice)

   I sort of saw this yesterday, except the sky was grey and silver, and there is a line of trees behind this field. But there were two crows, just like that, perched on cropped stalks.

     The sky is blue because I wanted to practice doing the gradation in colored pencils. There are five blues in the sky, plus white. I've painted that a lot of times, and it is always the same each time. With colored pencils, I'm sort of having to reinvent the wheel for myself, because the process is not the same as painting. The newness of it is a blessing.

    

 

Kick It to Start

These are just experiments, to help get myself going.

I've been really struggling to make images. I guess all the ennui is getting to me. Good thing my former self didn't have time to make all the things she thought of. I've been looking at those old sketchbooks and found this little idea. I'd like to sail away in a pair of shoes like that, right about now. 

    I'm still getting the hang of colored pencils. One problem here is that the paper (mi-tientes) has too much texture, so the wax kind of clumps up instead of blending well. But, I like working with a colored paper, and I haven't tried the colorless blender, yet. 

   And ha!  I see a mistake in the boat! Darn it!

 

Colorized Cricket

    One of my litho proofs was really light, and it reminded me of the old way of doing a value underpainting and layers of transparent color over. So, I tried out Prismacolor colored pencils on top of the proof. I learned I need to think ahead a little better and not be too hasty. Seems like I keep having to learn that one over and over.