Tag Archives: colored pencil

Hurray! I Got Rejected!

4 Comments

I finally bit the bullet, and sent out an application to a gallery.  I got a polite note back, saying my work was not a fit for the gallery.  Also, the note said, that my information would be kept on file, in case there was a change. (Yeah, right?)

So, why “Hurray!”?  I’m celebrating that I got past my fear of rejection, and actually tried.  You know what?  It wasn’t that bad.  I felt a pang of disappointment, but that was gone, within 10 minutes.

However, back to the subject…..birds. Or more precisely, crows.  I’ve fallen in love with crows now that I’ve moved back to Connecticut.  In New York City, they were noisy scavengers, who tore apart garbage bags.  In other words, a general nuisance.

But here, they’re beautiful.  They’re the only birds I could see that braved the snowfall.  Their flight is graceful, and their presence is formidable.

So, Windback Wednesday….here’s a visit to a drawing I made about a year ago, when I was coming to terms with winter in Connecticut.

I have absolutely nothing to show you….but……

Leave a comment

I’m working on “Making Peace with January”, and so far, it’s very pale…it would not show up very well.  I’m doing glazes with the colored pencil, building up to what I call a Pisces Gray, made up of a lot of colors, but the eye blends them into gray.  It’s a livelier gray than just using gray.

Recently I showed my website to someone, and she said “Wow, you have so many picture…..”.  I always thought I worked slowly, in the past, I would only get four drawings done in a year.  I was a grueling perfectionist, and eventually the guell tired me out.  I gave up art for a while.

But now, I have so many!  I’ve gotten over my perfectionism, my work hasn’t suffered (take note all you blocked artists out there).  And as of recently…I’ve discovered doing artwork has gotten much easier.  So easy, in fact, that I can’t believe it’s any good….but at least, it doesn’t seem bad.

The reason I post this, is that I know there are a lot of artists who need a bit of encouragement, and maybe my sharing would be helpful.  As one psychologist said….break it down into reasonable chunks.  Just do 15 minutes a day, if that’s all you can stand.  But 15 minutes daily adds up, and before you know it, you have a work of art! And then day, by day, the months go by, and you have a body of work.

So, maybe I do have something to show you….My old work from my perfectionist days.

tao2bear2224106_thumb.jpg426_thumb.jpgprewarwealthrichard

Monday Morning coming down…

Leave a comment

Happy New Week, my friends

Here’s the sketch for this picture that I don’t have a title for yet.  You can get an idea of the whole lost and found lines and color blocks.  I may get a chance to work on the large version today, but like most people….today I go to my day job.  I’ll be taking the late shift, so I have the morning.Scan_20140706 (3)

In my last post, I mentioned “A Step Up” as one of my failures.  I realize I shouldn’t be so hard on myself.  It was the first colored pencil drawing after having a respite of several years.  I hadn’t figured out exactly the direction I wanted to take in my work at that point.  So, for those of you who haven’t seen it:091

Goes to show what time and work can do.

Oh, the AGONY…..

Leave a comment

“Winged Foal” is coming along agonizingly slow.  It could be because I picked up a heavy, cast iron pan with my right hand alone.  Managed to do something to my wrist and hand.   They’re sort of numb, now, making it hard to grasp a pencil. 

So, enough complaining.

Here’s another abstract from my long lost past.  The idea of this was to base it on a letter-like hieroglyph, something like what Prince used, when he was “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince”.

Here ’tis.

Image

Completely Illrelevant, but then again, maybe not….

Leave a comment

I’ll be working on the background of “Winged Foal”, and I expect it will take some time.  Rather than bore you with repetitive pictures of the progress, I thought I’d post something I’ve shown no one, until now.

A few years back I was totally stuck.  My representational art was coming out less than awesome.  So, I decided to change styles to get out of the rut.  I got involved in the process, and did a couple of abstracts.  Here’s one, don’t  have a title for it.

Image

Doing these broke me out of my rut, and I suggest it to any of you artists who find yourself completely stuck.

The part that’s relevant, though, is  that I’m using the same idea in the background of “Winged Foal”.  Maybe not as dramatic, but I’m going to blast some music and get into the process of making an abstract blue sky.

And a word of thanks to all my followers, you encourage me so much with your “likes”.  I gave up on art for a while, because the art world didn’t welcome my work, and I felt discouraged, like I was beating my head against a brick wall.  To know that there are people who do like my work, encourages me.  Thanks.

Mother……..ing, son of a …….

2 Comments

I’ve started the sketch of “Scraggly Weed”. This is the 5×7 version, and the wall, of course is all off. It will be corrected in the final version.

What I do have to do to make the butterflies stand out, is what is called “negative drawing”. You do the front first, and work around that to fill in the background drawing. If I were a more positive person, I suppose I would say it’s a challenge. But since I’m not, I’ll tell you it’s a pain in the ass. Ah, what I go through for my art.

scragglyweedsketch002