Wax Bloom

Now with both eyes in:

Colored Pencil on Pastelbord, 11 x 14″

In better light:

Colored Pencil on Pastelbord, 11 x 14″ 

A little bit more:

Colored Pencil on Pastelbord, 11 x 14″ 

A bit more progress on this one while the subject naps. 

Colored Pencil on Pastelbord, 11 x 14″ 

I’ve decided, however, that I dislike white Pastelbord. I chose to use it so this piece would have a lighter air about it, but the pigments don’t pop (more the fault of the white than the board, admittedly) and it doesn’t feel as textured as the other colors.  It starts to burnish sooner than its green/sand/gray siblings, which makes it feel more like cold press illustration board.

I’ll be you guys didn’t see this drawing coming!

My son, born this evening at 5:24pm, weighing 9.33 lbs and measuring 20″.  Mother and baby are both doing wonderfully and will be home on Friday.

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. 

Almost there. The next update should be the finished drawing. The photo doesn’t quite do it justice – the darks are darker, and the jeans really don’t look quite so much like the jacket in terms of color.

Colored Pencil on Pastelbord, 8 x 14″ 

I was reading through the portraiture forum on Wetcanvas this afternoon when I encountered this thread, featuring this painting:

Oil Study by David Simons

“Hmmm”, I said to myself, “why does this look familiar to me”?

It’s a really great oil painting by David Simons, but I knew I had seen it before. Not the painting – the subject.

And where did I see it, you ask? Why, at the 15th Annual CPSA International Exhibition just this past summer! Here, have a look the colored pencil version of the same subject, as seen in “To The Point”, the organization’s quarterly newsletter:

As seen in To the Point

I know, right? What an incredible coincidence that BOTH of these artists went to the Bahamas and sat practically on top of one another to draw this guy! But wait…five more minutes of digging through the Wetcanvas Image Reference Library and we find….

The Reference Photo

So, yeah – I now see how serious a matter it is that folks work from their own photographs if they intend to enter that work into a competition. I remember being really blown away by this drawing when I saw it at the Strathmore, but to be honest – I feel kinda cheated now. It’s a technically masterful drawing, but it has no soul because theres nothing original about it. And now, at least one incredibly similar work exists by another artist. And, judging from the thread on the reference photo’s page, probably more, all clones of one another. Thats just ridiculous.

Sort of makes me wonder how many other drawings in that show were staggeringly well executed yet meaningless reproductions.

And to be perfectly clear, it’s Sherry Eid’s piece that beat out one-hundred and twenty-four other portrait and figure drawings to be one of the elite twenty-seven that were actually accepted into the show that I take issue with, not Mr. Simon’s one-hour oil study..

More than a little concerned over the color of the pants…a bit too close to the color of the jacket (which I’ve made more purple to deviate) for my liking…and I don’t recall for the life of me the technique I used for the jeans in “Jump!“…I’ll work it out.

Colored Pencil on Pastelbord, 8 x 14″