Next Project: Hannah

My niece took this photo of her sister, and I thought it was really cool - so I've cropped and played around with it a bit, and have decided to draw her larger than life. I'm not sure what I'll do on the background yet.

More about CPSA

To answer some of the questions posted, you can see more about the show, and last year's show, at cpsa.org .

The Colored Pencil Society of America is an international art organization - obviously geared to the medium of professional grade colored pencils. They have done extensive testing and contributed to the rating of colored pencils for lightfastness.

The convention/exhibit is in Atlanta this year - and since it's going on at the same time my son is getting married, I won't be going. Of course, it was in Seattle last year, and I wasn't able to go that time either. I did get up to Seattle twice to view the exhibit live, though - that was a great experience. Maybe next year?

Summer Feast was done on sanded paper, with a watercolor pencil underpainting (neocolors) and wax pencils over the top (colorsoft and prismacolors).

2 of my boys said I should stop drawing fruit -- they thought it was boring. Just goes to show you guys!

CPSA Show - I'm In!

OK - kind of excited and tooting my own horn, but I almost never submit to the CPSA annual international show because - well, I never get in. But I did this year! Yeah!

Summer Feast, the image at the top of this page is the piece that was accepted.

Amber at Two - Completed

I think I'll call this one done. The hair was easily edited for color using some browns, greys, and then ivory. I did add a bit of red to the shadows, and did a bit of finishing up on the dress.

Using the Fisher paper and polychromes, you could continue to tweak forever - it's a bit difficult to leave pencil strokes showing when you are accustomed to a completely smooth finished surface - but I like them, and this is more in keeping with the rest of my work.

Two things that I am not happy with yet.

1. It's difficult to keep the skin tones 'clean' when you are blowing dust from the other areas of the work. I concentrated on blowing away from the white dress and the skin, but I still feel like some of the dust strayed.

2. The darks want to flake off of the paper a bit - I think I'll wait until the very end to add background darks to any areas other than where necessary to keep the values correct to see if I can remedy this.

Finally, I really want to spray fix this, but have been cautioned about it.

On to the next project!

Here's my latest work in progress - this is Amber at Two - and it's ready for the fine tuning and finishing touches. The scan doesn't show the detail properly, but you get the idea.

This is 8x10 on Fisher 400 sanded paper with colored pencils. The reference image follows - as you can see, I'm not so interested in the colors from the reference image, but I do love the pose and expression. I haven't decided if I'll increase the contrast in my drawing yet - I'm liking the softer nature - especially since she's only 2...

The hair went on too red, so I lifted back what I could, went over it with a pale cool gray, and am now going back in with bits of yellow and green/browns. I still have quite a bit of work to go on the hair.

The details on her antique dress don't show in the scan well - there is much more contrast and color variation.

Hope to wrap this one up this week so I can start a new one!

Welcome to my blog -- I know, you can't believe I finally created a blog site. (My kids are laughing at me.)

This is place where I will post work in progress and finished artwork, brag about my grandchildren, and answer the questions that I don't get to in emails.

Feel free to follow or comment!