Felt Like A Hallelujah Moment

A Cowboy's Still Life (pastel painting, 10x12)

This is my response to the Virtual Sketch Date challenge for May. The photo was of two girls at a hoedown and one of them was wearing a cowboy hat. I don't draw people very well and the idea is to be inspired and use the photo as a jumping off point.

My own cowboy hat ( a Shady Brady - very high tone in cowboy terms) looked quite alot like the hat the older girl was wearing. So I set myself up a still life with my boyfriend's old dirty work gloves on a chair in the living room. It was about 6PM and the light was coming through only a corner of the kitchen window and I slid the chair around until the light hit the objects in this incredible way. I took a reference photo of my own (to preserve the light effect) and then I sketched the still life.

Today I did my painting with Nupastel. And I remembered my first art love from high school - we had to reproduce a master's painting in a different medium. Someone had given me Conte Crayons and I used them to reproduce a Rembrandt and then used them to draw everything I could find until there was nothing left but stubs I couldn't hold and then I could never find pastels I liked as much. Now I have choice and I chose Nupastels - lovely smudgy but firm pastels - to try them out.

And I am extremely happy with the results. I like that there are three distinct textures in this piece (the wood, the hat and the gloves) and I thinkg I pulled them all off. I also think I pulled the lighting effect of the chair fading off into the shadow pretty darned well too. I don't mean to sound like I am bragging.... I've just been so.... disappointed in the work I've been doing lately and jealous of how wonderful everyone else's art looks. So I and just feeling genuinely overjoyed to have maed a piece of art that I am happy with to the bottom of my soul.

I think the trick here is that I just let myself go. Rather that working so hard and trying so hard I just let it come out of my hands and onto the paper. I was in some sort of zone that in colour is hard for me to get to... I could see the block of colour and then just blocked them in and fine tuned it to blend them. I wish it always fet this easy.

My new box of pastels rock. Whoo hoo!

Opening Soon (12 x 12, watercolour pencil over gesso)

This is my interpretaion of the Virtual Sketch Date inspiration photo for April 2009, a rhodoendron bud.

I'm quite happy with how it turned out. I like the intense colours of the pencils once they are wetted and how the gesso base gives it a sort of chalky feeling when it dries. I completely chickened out on the background though. Or maybe I just reigned myself in a bit... I originally intended to do a wild geometric background and then decided that it would probably distract alot from the drawing I had already done. So I just kept it simple with a light wash.

Good Evening In The Morning

Last week I stumbled on the Virtual Sketch Date website which offers a sketching, painting, art challenge once a month. People do a piece of art based on an inspirational photo posted there and then link the photos for others to see. I missed the date (obviously because this is May...) but I really liked the image and wanted to do a drawing of it anyways. So here is my attempt...

Good Evening (9x12, pencil with pencil crayon)

This sketch is really much better in real life. The birds are grosbeaks, I think, from the colour and the shape of their beaks and bodies. I added some light coloured pencil over the pencil drawing but it isn't showing up that well in this photo. And the bird on the right isn't washed out in the original drawing. Adjusting the way you look at the monitor will help bring the make bird on the right up and not looking so washed out. At least it helps on my laptop...

It also looks a bit odd - it's in my sketchbook and drawn on the back of the patched together paper from the "Wednesday at 7AM" still life sketch I did late last night - I didn't want to waste paper and initially I never intended to draw anything more than what was on the lower half so I wasn't worried about the patched together bit. And it looks curvy and that is of course because it's in the sketch book... Oh well, I like it.

I called this "Good Evening" but since this is moring I'll just say have a great day.