I'm Back! With new drawings to show!

For over a month I have been having internet connection problems and therefore not updating this blog. I won't trouble you with all the trouble we had getting this computer connected back to the internet.

The month of July is busy for me. Next week I will be at The Artfair on the Green on the UW-La Crosse campus. Five of us are sharing a double site for the Odin Arts Cooperative. Hopefully, some of my cards and prints will sell, at least enough for my share of the entry fee.

Here are some of the drawings I have been working on for the past six weeks.

This oil pastel was inspired by the Bluff Country Studio tour we took in April. Too keep the colors cool and green, I made it a point not to use any earth colors at all. The resulting blues and greens with the pink and orange gravel road kept the effect of the cool, rainy spring day that it was.

The inspiration for this scene of a great blue heron on a fallen tree was several years old. I spotted this while bike riding through the marsh one evening. The digital camera I was using at the time was small and gave a soft image, but it was enough. This drawing was also an oil pastel.

This charcoal drawing is a radical change for me. I was adjusting a recent photo of the La Crosse River and made a gray scale copy to get a good idea of the light/dark pattern. The resulting image was so much more compelling than that in color! So this 10" x 12" drawing was done in charcoal pencils.

My latest is also based on photographs taken recently in the La Crosse River marsh. Early morning is the best time for picture taking. Because of the size (18" x 24"), the background was done with watercolor washes. No way could I get the smoothness required in colored pencil without lots of time and care.