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.