Sunday, June 22, 2014

Dried Chili Pepper Pods


All done! 8 x 10 inches, all Prismacolor colored pencils, on Fabriano Artistico Hot Press paper.
Its officially Summer now, so I guess its fitting that I drew something HOT to kick off the season.

In the last post I did some work in progress shots of these. I did end up using some Prismacolor Indigo for the darkest darks. These got very burnished and slick by the end, which is OK. Sometimes I leave things kind of 'grainy', and sometimes I burnish. It just depends on what I'm drawing. These needed that waxy finish, so they needed to 'go there'.

I'm not a big chili pepper (or any kind of hot pepper) person, at all, but I do like chili pepper flakes in some dishes, and also dab a bit of the chili sauce on my food in a Chinese restaurant (avoiding the actual seeds though!). One of my favorite dishes is pasta with broccoli rabe, anchovies, olive oil, chili flakes, black pepper and parmesiano reggiano cheese. Chili pepper is good for you, they say - boosts your immune system or something.

I'll make prints for the shop in the next few days. I think these would be fun, framed up on a kitchen wall, yes?





Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Chili Peppers - WIP

I bought this package of dried chili pepper pods a while back, thinking they'd be a good drawing. I'm finally getting around to doing them! That's the nice thing about dried stuff  - its lasts a good while in the cupboard, patiently waiting, until you get around to using it.

I've gone back to Prismacolors for this. Before I bought my new electric pencil sharpener (Bostitch SuperPro 6), I had all but given up on these. They were breaking like crazy (in my old duller sharpener), and I thought I might never use them again. But now that I have the new sharpener, which only rarely eats one, they're back on my list of usable pencils. And I'd forgotten how much I love them.




I laid out three of the best chilis in the package, and am trying to work 'left to right' as best I can, to avoid smearing the parts I've already done (I'm right handed - if you're left handed, you would work the opposite direction). I don't always do this, but sometimes it works out to be the best way.



I started with a Raspberry pencil, and kind of mapped out the wrinkle patterns in each chili. Now I'm going back in to each one and rendering it out. The last chili is very very dark, almost black. I've been avoiding using actual black to get the darks dark enough, but I may have to break down and use it. So far I've stuck to Black Grape and Black Cherry to do the darkest darks. I'll wait until I have them all to the same point of finish, then do the final tweaking at the end.



I tend to stick with one brand of pencil when I start working on a piece - I'm not sure why. Maybe I'm just lazy! I could try some Polychromo Indigo I think, or something else to do the darkest darks. I'll figure it out when I get there!

Sunday, June 15, 2014

Popsicle season

Summer hasn't officially started yet, if you go by the calendar, but if you go by the weather, its definitely here! It was 107 one day last week, and if that's not a reason to break out the popsicles, I don't know what is.



This is a little promo piece for my children's book portfolio. I thought I might break out the watercolors, but at the last minute reached for my colored pencils after all. 



This was done with Caran d'ache Pablos (oil based) on Fabriano Artistico Hot Press paper. I'm still getting used to the grain of this paper. I love it - but its very different than Stonehenge, which I've been using for so long. Stonehenge has a kind of 'over all' bumpy, sandpaper-like grain - except its not at all like sandpaper. Its just an even, more 'dotted' texture. Fabriano has a more 'grid-like' back and forth, woven sort of grain. So the pencils make a different kind of mark on each of them. I work in a circular stroke (mostly), so there's been a bit of a learning curve in getting them to work the way I want them too. No complaints! Just sharing fiddly details.

Last night I found myself thinking about Christmas art. I know, right? Every year I wait until the last minute to get my act together, but not this year! I'm going to start right now, as soon as I finish typing out this blog post. Really. No, I mean it.

OK, but seriously, there's a lot on the board - some in the planning stages, and some half or more than half done. The new website is almost there, but not quite. There's a whole new line of art for a whole new 'thing' that's gestating in various stages around the studio. I've been doing a good deal of purging of old stuff that's been taking up space in file drawers for too long, and it feels really good! The tax people are never going to audit me for 2006, so good-bye old receipts; and no one must ever find the art for those old projects  - the ones you do for the money but never admit to or show the art from. Every now and then I watch an Episode of Hoarders, just to keep myself from 'going there' (don't worry, I'm nowhere even on the same planet as that, but when I get even a little bit of clutter starting on a desktop or drawer, I think, "this is how it starts . . . ").

I'm also knitting, getting stuff ready for my little etsy knitting shop for Fall and Winter. Every evening my  kitties come out on the porch with me and hang out while I knit a bit, after a day of coloring and cleaning. The rest of the day they do this. If they're not hunting. The one on the left caught a huge lizard yesterday - omg - but I was able to rescue it and put it back outside. Never a dull moment . . .