Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Pieces of Art

OOh... blogger has changed on me!
Anyway, I was just stopping by to post a couple of pictures I drew this week.


First up is a place I have drawn before- Cul's Courthouse Grille in Charles City (at the Courthouse), VA.  I decided to use some pastel pencils after watching Colin Bradley's videos on You Tube again.  They are considerably faster to use than coloured pencils, which is always nice when you are short on time.



I have drawn this guy before too.  He is a heron who inhabits a local strip mall property.  Sometimes he lands on the roofs of the shops, other times on cars... but most of the time he is on the rocks around the fish-filled retention pond.  As we walked around it this last weekend, we saw him and I snapped a couple of photos- from which I painted this picture.

I am still very much investigating this medium.  Trying to get the darks as dark as I want them is a little difficult.  I may need to get hold of some of the darker shades of pastel pencil.  And I have yet to find the perfect paper.  Cul's was drawn on Strathmore Pastel Paper- which was not bad, but I did not like the shade I used.  The Heron was drawn on Canson Ingres- but it was a very thin paper and came out with vertical lines after painting.  I really dislike those!  I have another Strathmore paper to try (a darker shade this time) and a Mi-teintes to try too.  We'll see how those go.