Remembering Ziggy

My cat of 15 years crossed over to be with his brothers this morning. He was a wonderful friend and I will miss him dearly. He has such spunk. He was truly my furry four-legged child.

A small work, only 7 x 5 inches. It's the first of three shell works that are going into a frame and mat set designed to hold multiple photos.

This is a welk shell, native to NC. I found the shell some years ago.

This is Prismacolor pencils on navy blue Fabriano pastel paper. I've had this paper for several years and I think that the color has probably been discontinued by now.

A Pleasant Surprise!

This is "Past Prime". It is a mixed media piece of watercolor and colored pencil. It was juried into the "Explore This 5" 2009 CPSA show. The show will be online this year. Awards will be posted on Feb 1.

It's the first CPSA show I've been juried into. Although, they were only 250 entries this year, and 50 were selected for the show. So if we do the math, that means that 1/5 or 20% were accepted. (That was to keep me from going on the big ego trip!)

I'm in some pretty good company. Names I recognized were Pat Averill, Vera Curnow, Kay Dewar, Elizabeth Patterson, and Ranjini Venkatachari.

December VSD

Here's my take on December's sketch photo. It was so snowy and cold looking. I didn't see much color and so I thought the ink drawing with just a touch of color would fit it.

This is a small work, 7 x 5 inches. It was done using a Sakura Pigment pen in a couple of sizes. The color was added with Derwent Inktense pencils.

I did take a bit of creative license with some of the elements in the photo.

You can view a larger image by clicking here

Visit the Virtual Sketch Date Blog here.

November Virtual Sketch

It's not exactly a sketch.... more of a manipulation. But I've been fighting bronchitis for most of the month and this is about the best I can do right now.

This was done in Photoshop Elements. It's been cropped, light and darks have been pushed, and then the charcoal and chalk filter has been applied.

It turned out abstract looking. I might have to try a print on velata paper. Velata would preserve the "charcoal" fuzzy look of things.

I'm an amateur photographer too, but then I think most artists will work with whatever media is in front of them - pencils, paints or pixels.

Experimentation

I'm experimenting with Yes! canvas, using the trio of pears reference from the virtualsketchdate blog. Yes! is advertised as being able to handle any kind of wet media. These are both small pieces, 8 x 6 inches.

The first image is the Sharpie marker version. I'm not too happy with the makers on canvas. They took too long to dry. I even let some of the layers dry overnight, but when I put more maker on top, it dissolved the layer underneath. This could be a good thing if you want to mix the colors, but I was looking more for the previous layers to act as an underpainting. But it is much more graphic than what I normally do.


This is the watercolor version. Not too thrilled with this one either. It was quite difficult to get the watercolor to stick to the canvas. Just the least bit of water dissolved the pigment right down to the white canvas. I had to let the watercolors thicken up until they were about like acrylics. I used lots and lots of watercolor here. It's not exactly brushed on, but more pounced on with an old brush. This was the only way I could get the paint to "stick" to the canvas.

I can see that there are possibilities here. Maybe I need a different kind of watercolors. I started with Windsor/Newton straight out of the tube, but I ended up using Yarka semi-moist pan colors. It was easier to maintain the viscosity of the paint. The white is watercolor gouache and as you can see, it picked up the underlying shadow color, even though I waited 24 hours before putting it on the canvas.

It might be me, because watercolors are not my media of choice. I've painted in oils and acrylics in the past, but I found the Yes! canvas to be difficult to handle.

However, I love the fact that this image is now on canvas. I've sprayed it with fixative and I think that it could be sprayed with Krylon clear to completely seal it. Then it could be framed without glass - something I can't always do with my colored pencil works.

Pear Trio

Here is my drawing for October's virtual sketch. I'm working on doing more graphite work. This is in my sketchbook and was shaded with a pure graphite pencil and brush.