Friday, May 2, 2008

Shall We Dance?

I spent some time in my studio before work yesterday and had some fun with color. I was having one of those “directionless” moments since I didn’t have a work in progress to go to, and I didn’t have enough time to get into painting on my color wheel (I have yet to work more on that one).

So, I thought I’d start with the “drawing” game I’ve mentioned before (miscellaneous subjects and media written on little pieces of paper, randomly drawn out of a bowl). This is one way that I get warmed up or just get started on something if I’m at a loss for an idea.

IMG_0595

The subject chosen was “fish” and the medium was colored pencil. Usually, I might only spend as little as 15 minutes on a warm-up, or it can go for up to an hour. It depends on how “into it” I get. Well, I probably spent about 3 hours total on it over the course of 2 days, squeezing it in around work, school, and errands. My daughter thinks he should be named Albert.

Doing something new and different is always fun. It’s when I get stuck in a rut that drawing seems more of a chore. In this drawing, I like that it’s colorful, but it’s a step away from the type of color I used to fall back on (like in the Jack and Jill image of my last post). I’ve found that I like the layering of many different colors with colored pencils. I couldn’t imagine just going in with a single color (blue for example) and just leaving it at that. I used a combination of several blues, greens, and grays for the body, along with some others.

5 comments:

Belinha Fernandes said...

Great fish!!!!!!:-)

Diane Smith said...

Thanks a bunch! It was one of those drawings that was fun to work on.

Gretel said...

This is really nice; so original and delicately executed!

Diane Smith said...

Thanks for the enouragement - and thanks for visiting!

Raluca said...

hi,hiiii!!sure we dance,with such a cute gentelman:))!!