Practice, practice, practice

I'm not traveling for any art workshops this summer. So I'm doing the next best thing. I'm working through Arlene Steinberg's Masterful Color: Vibrant Colored Pencil Paintings Layer by Layer.

These are the first three exercises/demos in the book. The iris is my current lesson and it's in the first stage of underpainting. I'm using Prismacolors and a Canson Biggie sketch paper - so nothing fancy here!

Working this way has advantages. No airfare, car rental, hotels, etc. I can stop and start at will. (But I'm trying to put in several hours a day on this.) I can do the same lesson a hundred times if that's what I need to understand the process. I'm in my own little studio with Mickey the cat offering criticism when needed. Being an artist is a solo type of profession. You have to be your own boss and set a schedule you can stick to. It would be nice to have a teacher occasionally, but times being what they are, this is good too.

I really like Arlene's work. She and Gemma Gylling own and run the scribbletalk.com forum for colored pencil artists. It's a great resource.