Value Checking

Here's a progressive of the sketch I'm working on for the festival. After working on it for a while, I needed a bird's eye view, and a clue as to what values to put where. My scanner cropped off the two edges, so imagine there is more there. I will tone down the vividness somewhat, but I love the juicy colors and utopian feel of fruit crate labels, and that is the look I am going for here. I noticed (after scanning) that she reminds me of Toni Braxton, whose "Unbreak My Heart" I used to play endlessly!

Since I'm doing this sketch in Prismacolor pencils, I have to put the colors on opposite how they go in Pastel. Light colors go on first here, but on the street, colors will go dark-to-light.

Face on newsprint

I'm using newsprint to practice making quick, large drawings. For some reason, the colors are really wonky when I use my digital camera instead of the scanner. It's too big for the scanner.

Since they seemed to have either a blue cast or a yellowish one, I set the camera on "sepia" and gave it a brown cast.

Really though, it was just plain pencil on newsprint.

Spirit Bird

Even though I swore "no new drawing" for the street painting, I am designing something specifically for a 6 x 6 foot piece of parking lot. I drew while on vacation ( we went to the mining & ghost town of Jerome north of Phoenix.) I drew these on the trip. After working up the figure (left) I felt her arm was all wrong and should be bent. Then I couldn't decide what to put in the hand. Finally chose a bird, but not a solid one. I may draw it last, transparent so her hand shows through. Did I get the idea from being in a famous ghost town? A spirit bird flying from her hand? And, there's not enough water at the bottom and side . . .the fish are supposed to have more room. Really, I have a lot of figuring to do. Next time I won't draw on lined paper, which just confuses things further!

What I look forward to immensely, is sitting in a big black square, with time to draw! It feels like magic drawing living things, right on the street! I've always enjoyed the idea of making something from nothing.

Asking

This figure's supposed to be reaching out, but I ran out of paper before the hand, and it was too late to change scale. I like the idea of the hand in back supporting her though. I've had figures with the supporting hand in front too, and like the way it anchors a figure and makes it seem more solid. The background went badly and I could not rescue it. Oh, well.

I will be away for a few days, but I promise I'll be drawing every day and I'll post when I can.

Practicing with this Tutorial

Here I'm working out the kind of details I'll need for the upcoming street painting fest. This eye is utterly without subtlety but it's an eye... and I need to keep practicing them. I want to create a figure whose expression pulls the viewer into the piece. This one looks merely startled. There's also the problem of overworking - I did that between the eye and brow here.

Melanie has a really good tutorial on making effective eyes. She also demonstrated at last week's workshop. One useful tip was that, on black, the base color for the white of the eye should be gray. This fact alone was tremendously helpful because once you introduce white into the picture, you can't seem to ever get rid of it. This is a nice steel gray pastel paper.

Mendocino Fernscape

I recently played around with this book cover art to make a digital art piece. I had photocopied the cover, and held the photocopy up to my window with the ferns underneath it. The ferns are pressed from a trip to Mendocino, California 2 years ago. I digitally manipulated the colors to create purple on the trunks. Then I added a block of green at the bottom and drew in the moon in Photoshop.
This kind of art is complete escapism, and a wonderful way to relax.

Shadow of the Moon

Even the shadow of the moon could not make me sleepy last night ! But a little cooler than it has been when the sun goes down. This artist has invited us to draw every day this month of October. I have the upcoming streetpainting festival on my mind (October 18-19) and this shadow sketch is a reminder not to take my chalk art so seriously, and to paint on a street, or my driveway or the patio just because I can.
Another artist , an expert in tracing shadows, is the impulse for this. Then I added little text in Photoshop. The following morning I snapped it by daylight. I really would love to do a seated person this way. In Arizona, drawing shadows in daytime is just too hot. Only nighttime shadowstalking is cool enough.

Pastel and California Shiraz on concrete.