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TGIF folks, almost the beginning of a new weekend.  Yesssssss!!! This little 5"x7" piece is coming along.  You can see the tools that I am using for scratching.  The red handled ones are from Ampersand with the one on the left being the fiberglass brush.  I made the middle tool out of a double ended stylus that is used for pottery, just ground off the little balls on each end to make them pointed and I like the fact that I can work both directions.   I am using some diluted ink to color in shadow areas, although shadow areas don't look all that shadowed - so might need to darken those areas several more times.  I keep fussing with the grille and need to move on to other parts so that I can put it into perspective with the other areas of bright chrome and shadows.  Working with the ink is different than anything else,  I am used to being able to move, lighten or leave and the ink on the clay doesn't quite go where I want it to.  I...

  Well can't really decide what I want to do, I had pulled 7 reference shots of things I wanted to work on.  So am going to start several of them and then work on what I feel like at the moment.  However, I looked at them all and thought, what was I thinking as some of them are pretty complex now that I really look at them. Even though I have the pig CP piece which is in process I am getting called to start another scratchboard.  I am finding that each scratchboard is so different as to how it takes the inks, this one is showing the marks I make with the brush pen and also you can see the graphite outline that I am using as a guideline.  I see things already that I will need to correct, but am remembering this is the first layers and shadows still need to be added down the road.  While I am apprehensive about doing a car which I know little about, I felt I should give it a try.  I really like the photo which is from Paul Jones at PMP. Ok, I'...

When I first saw this photo by Patricia Ann Jones, at PMP, I just had to stop and laugh.  First thought was "If Pigs Could Fly".  So I dutifully checked out the ears and aerodynamically I said this one could.  I knew I just had to draw him/her.  Truly only a face a mother could love.  I am just in the mood for a little humor. This is a combination of things, mostly CP, some pastel and white gel pen (usually knocked back by additional color pencil on top of it) Be sure to read the previous post about this week's Featured Artist - Alexander Clausen. Thanks for stopping by and hope you are having a great weekend.  

Alexander is a man of few words and bold strokes, so I am going to be paraphrasing a lot of this interview. Alexander, you may need to defend yourself if I mess it up!!  Alexander is right now primarily working in figurative drawing. He has taken advantage of attending workshops and groups where they are doing  lot of drawing from life.  He is also drawing multiples of similar pictures, watching the improvement as he becomes more familiar with the subject.  He usually draws and paints with a very bold line and has done some wonderful abstract pieces as well.  He has a wonderful sense of humor and can be depended upon to tell you the unvarnished truth. 1). How long have you been doing art - how did,you get started I started painting about 3 1/2 years ago, after seeing "Garden of Love" by David Nicholson in an exhibition about Lust and Death in Austria.   ( I have included only two of the many self portraits he has done (I always admire som...

Whew, finally got this challenge piece finished for the May "Heavy Metal" PMP group.  This is a fun piece, 5"x7" and fit into something I have been experimenting with - gold leaf.  This is mostly color pencil, but it does have gold leaf highlights.  We were supposed to be doing metal, so might have been a bit of cheating here, but hey - no one said it was outside the rules.  One other thing I did differently in this piece, besides the gold leaf, was to polish the color pencil with a rubber color mover and toilet paper between layers to try to get the white tooth of the paper filled in.  Can't really see it on here but it leaves a very glossy finish (got a light glare when I tried to put full light on the piece to photo it) on the wood and the gold leaf also is very shiny. Also got myself organized this morning, now that I have the Zebra finished, and put 7 more things on the board.  Going to be a combination of scratch, clayboard and trying ...

Well I think I am ready to call this scratchboard piece, 11"x14", completed unless someone sees something glaring that needs to be corrected.  Only thing I am concerned about is whether or not I need to make the bottom stripe on the chest area smoother to match the others in the neck and face area.  I think the answer is going to be yes, but your thoughts please.  Again I want to thank Gary Jones, a wildlife photographer superb, on the PMP site for this wonderful reference picture that I flipped to create this view.  I actually thought that turning it this way would help me with my natural right-handed strokes.  My husband, on showing it absolutely hated the way it is cropped, so I am thinking everyone else will like it just fine.  I finished this off with a bit more pastel highlights in the black stripes as well, just to add a little color interest and jazz the black up just a bit.  Still unsure if I should spray and seal the entire p...

 One of my pastels Over the last couple of years I have met some wonderful artists, but more important they have been wonderful, supportive people.  Hope you get to know them better and check out their sites over the next few weeks.  I asked each the same questions, in bold, and am too learning more about my friends and artists too.   The first artist is Renate Arends, 47 years, happily married and living in the Netherlands.  Her occupation is a detective at the police in Emmen, the place where she lives.  But working and art isn't enough, they have a new baby!!!!   1.) How long have you been doing art - how did you get started? My art experience started in 2003. In this year I was very depressed and tried to end my life. For recovery I was given occupational therapy and could choose what to do. I chose watercolor painting. I loved it and started painting at home. And, voila, I still doing it today. It gives me peace. one...

In life there are times when you are very thankful for things you usually take for granted.  That just happened to me, I am thankful for being able to read and being persistent on the internet.  You all know there is so much on the internet these days that you can either watch YouTube or read something to learn just about anything.  I am a pretty voracious reader and for folks who I really follow and do blogs I read all the historical info, catching names of people they know and techniques that don't come up in queries - another kind of networking I guess.  Drives my hubby nuts ........ (is that a bad thing?) In working on this piece I came across a scratchboard artist who works with adding pastel dust on his scratchboard - John Hopman of Tuscan AZ.  Well eureka, the lightbulb went off - A BREAK THRU - I was off and running, excited because I love pastel and have a boatload of colors.   I thought I wanted a softer color transition ...

Well he or she is coming along.  Got the neck and chest areas scoped out, you can see the black in the muzzle, and the in between area is the flank and back area.  Still haven't figured out how to do two scans and then stitch them together, so the entire Zebra is not actually shown here.  Am going to continue to stick with the getting the white stripes in and the nose area, then coming back in to shade.  Shading as I am reading is really important in scratch work and I am having a problem making myself wait as I want to get the more 3D effects now rather than waiting to get it all white and add back in.  I am constantly experimenting with strokes on the white strips and fear that I may have overworked the ones I have done in more fully so might have to try to add back in light wash and then stroke out again so it isn't so flat.  All I can say is the more you do reveals how much you have left to learn.  Thanks goodness, as it would be boring to think ...

    My once a year illness has been on track and whatever Paul had he shared some derivative with me.  Boy it was nasty stuff, but am feeling better today and hoping that I could get more work done on the Zebra.  Getting nice out so got to go to the porch. Here is my current revisions.  You can see I really had to redraw a lot and essentially have lost the original drawing.   Not sure how it happened but it is off and hard to find something in the reference to pin to.  I have got to get some new white Saral tracing paper as this waxy film just doesn't come off or cover now that it has been on a while.  the other option is to use the gray I have and see if it stands out on the board - can't be any worse than this white junk. Again you can see with the contrast corrections on the scanned image the reflections off the board.  Boy have I got a lot to learn with this both with technique and photographing.  I simpl...

Tried two different image ways here with the scratchboard, left is a scan that I have corrected because it was too dark, the other is my digital camera which even without flash on tends to bleed away the stokes.  Am going to keep experimenting with best way to capture the image, I think I am going to have to figure out an outside setup and see if natural light does a better job of picking up the scratching.  I think IRL is somewhere in between the two as the black board does reflect light more than absorb it.  Ok, I think I found a system now and am emphasising, for me, the black stripes, which creates a map on the board so then know where to find the white stripes.   Well sort of as I am redrawing pretty much as I go, you can see with with the white lines I originally had.  I think in the future I am going to just put in some main placement points and then free hand draw right on the board rather than try to transfer an image and have i...