Pictures

I’ve been trying some new things with artwork. Click if you’d like to see.

I did this one Sunday (click to embiggen & see details):

It’s done with pastel on a sanded board. I used a technique I gather is common, but I’d never tried before. And I was specifically aiming to get away from my over-dependence on the details of source photos. I wanted a sense of unreality.

Here’s the source photo. I took it just after dawn on New Year’s Day:

Whatever I got right or wrong in the painting, I at least succeeded in not being too literally faithful to the source. Definitely pleased with that.

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Here’s another source photo. This is my favorite lamp (and another super rummage-sale score, of course).

This time I was okay with more-or-less realism. My aim was to do three different drawings/paintings, seeing how well I could capture the glow in different media. I started with the hardest medium for glow-catching, colored pencil (click to embiggen):

I did that during Christmas week and the colored pencil work was so freakin’ tedious that I haven’t yet tried the pastel or mixed-media versions yet.

I expect I could improve the glow on this one by judiciously brushing with paint thinner (which makes the pencil work more solid looking). But I’m not quite ready to risk ruining it yet.

With the pastel of the road, I started out with the idea that I might completely ruin everything and that that would be okay (“No, it won’t mean you’re a talentless hack, Claire. Quit your whining and just get in there and see what happens.”)