Thursday, February 25, 2010

More works in progress this winter










This winter so far has been a very creative time for me. (Have drawing supplies, must use them!) This drawing is of a Pre-Columbian Mexican clay sculpture is in the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. It is a strange cat-creature with some human features. This was an opportunity to try out another Mi-Tientes paper color-Sand and Derwent drawing pencils. The printer ran out of yellow ink while printing out the reference photo, but that doesn't matter since my color choices are arbitrary anyway.






This drawing Late Afternoon is another large (18" x 24") one done on watercolor paper. Something this large and complicated I will always do the basic drawing on another sheet of paper and trace it onto the Water color paper. Then I masked off with liquid mask and masking tape. The sky is a large area and isn't covered later with colored pencil. The buildings are done in grays and covered over with white, light grays and light pink to give the effect of weathered paint. For this drawing I went back to using my reliable Prismacolors.The source photo was taken a few years ago in southern Minnesota and there was something about that large house that intrigued me and I finally made a composition that might do it justice. Several of the outbuildings have been cropped out, the pickup truck flipped to face the house and the
time of day made later to emphasize
more saturated color and create a mood. A quick review shows some slight changes need to be made-particularly the tree on the far right.






Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Creating a portfolio web site!

I am finally putting together a site that will show all of the pictures fit to be shown that were done in the past few years. These will be for sale, contact me if you are interested in a purchase.
I am putting in new pictures on a regular basis, I didn't realize I had so many!
http://middleborderartist.com/

Monday, February 15, 2010

More winter drawings

Winter Sunshine and Shadows, 20" x 16" is a result of our drive to Rockford, IL. It is done with Derwent tinted charcoal pencils on white paper. The large American Elm tree is a rare and beautiful sight.
Another drawing, Winter Storage, 12" x 16" Derwent drawing pencils on warm gray paper, is based on a photograph taken during one of our drives. It has taken a couple of years of occasionally looking at the photo and figuring out what to do with it. Different cropping was tried, elements added and removed until I got something that worked. The detailed textures of the boards make for interesting patterns and the old car behind a gate like an animal added interest and humor.
Because of the complexity I gridded and did the underdrawing on a separate sheet of paper.


Wednesday, February 3, 2010

New works on winter themes

This drawing is a direct result of our drive to Rockford, IL. The trees and their setting was from early afternoon and the twilight colors from photographs taken much later that day. I did the drawing on white bristol with oil color pencils. I haven't done much work with my oil color pencils and made a commitment this year to use more variety of media (not just oil pastels and wax-based colored pencils).

In keeping with this commitment I did this large charcoal drawing of a pasture oak tree. I drew this directly on the white paper without a grid (also trying to break that habit!), just making some marks on the paper for the tree placement.


The apple tree drawing was done on tan paper with carbon pencils and white "charcoal" pencil. The original photo was taken about twenty years ago with a 127 twin lens reflex camera. Back in those days we rolled, developed and printed our own black & white photos at home. I much prefer digital! A few winters back I set up a light box and copied the black & white negatives with the digital camera and stored them on the harddrive for future use. I have lots of color slides that need to be copied some day.