Wax Bloom

It felt like it took forever, but here it is.

Colored Pencil on Pastelbord, 8 x 11″ 

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I had to chop four inches from the bottom of the canvas to do it, but I’ve finally finished it:

Colored Pencil on Pastelbord, 11 x 10″

 If I hadn’t cut it there would be a large field of green in the front of the piece which wouldn’t have added anything visually interesting – so, I took a liberty.

It’s a relief to have this one done; when something sits on my desk for as long as this one did it starts to get stale in my mind and it’s tough to force myself into working on it.  I’m mostly happy with the way it turned out, though.

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And here’s the finished drawing:

 
Colored Pencil on Pastelbord, 8 x 14″

 There’s a third one that I want to do to complete this as a series, but its going to have to wait a bit – I need a break from drawing that jacket. 

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Finished!

Colored Pencil on Pastelbord, 8.5 x 14″

Best viewed large.

Pastelbord is most certainly my surface of choice for any future work. The amount of layers the gritty surface will accept are tantamount to cheating when compared to whats possible with Illustration Board or Mi-Teintes paper. If you’ve never worked with the stuff, I highly recommend you give it a try.

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You’ll notice that this is the same image that I posted yesterday – I wasn’t able to take a new photo this morning because its dark, gloomy and raining/icing here so the light was poor. But, the additional details aren’t terribly discernible (fly away hairs, texture highlights on the sweater) in the photograph and the only significant piece missing is my signature.

Colored Pencil on Pearl Mi-Teintes Board, 16 x 9″

I have to say I’m very, very pleased with the way this drawing turned out. The technique employed is one I have been striving for since I saw Marcella Beaty’s “The Turk“* at the CPSA show in Bethesda, MD over the summer. I also feel that in a way, I “leveled up” with this peice. I found myself able to achieve details that I’ve struggled with in past drawings, and seeing details and colors that I’ve never noticed before.

And yeah, I went with the ultra creative “Self Portrait IV” for the title.

I’m going to look into getting a high resolution scan of the drawing done so all of the details are captured. For now, a break for a day or two, and on to my next!

* It took a fair bit of searching to turn up a copy of Marcella’s drawing. Since it took no awards at the exhibit (which is shocking and shameful on the part of the judges) the CPSA doesn’t display it on their website. (By the way, nice job with that inaccessible, search-engine-unfriendly image map, CPSA.) I found a copy of it on this thread on Scribbletalk, but you have to be a member of the forum to view attachment. So…I’ve taken the liberty of hosting the image myself so folks can see what an incredibly well done, technically masterful drawing it is.

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Colored Pencil on Cold Press Illustration Board

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Colored Pencil on Cream Mi-Teintes Paper, 8 x 10″

My first commission of 2008, finished. I was a bit nervous starting this one as I didn’t have any prior experience drawing someone with as dark as a complexion as Debbie, but in the end I feel like I matched it pretty well. Colors used were sand and yellow ochre for a base, burnt ochre over the base, chocolate, dark umber, black cherry and dark green for shadows, with terra cotta as a mid-tone.

I also used circulism for this piece, which I think suited it well. I first started experimenting with this technique with graphite drawings to varying degrees of success, but I think I’ve finally gotten the hang of it with this drawing. I’m not claiming I nailed the technique, just that I managed to not deviate from it over the course of the drawing.

As an aside, I noticed this morning that I had used the smooth side of the Mi-Teintes paper quite by accident. An entire week went by without my realizing it, so there must not be as much a difference as I had originally thought. Of course, at about the same time I noticed that she is holding a kitten in the source photo after an entire week of staring at it, so maybe we chalk both up to distraction.

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• Graphite on Cold Press Illustration Board
• 8 x 10"
• Source Photo © Cindy Li

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Colored Pencil on Eggshell Mi-Teintes Paper 

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