Call it a truce...

Since I didn't have any pressing projects in the studio at the moment, I did the old random drawing game that I do to warm-up once in a while. The subject I pulled out of the bowl was: cat. The media: (Yep! You guessed it) chalk pastel.

I don't know what it is - I don't do this very often, yet chalk pastel has been the randomly selected media most of the time. And, as you may already know, chalk pastel and I don't really "click."


Luckily, this encounter with chalk pastel was much more pleasant than the previous ones. Where those drawings will remaine forever buried on the drawing pad, I actually kind of like this one . I don't know what it is with blue, though (if you recall the sickly blue pig of a couple months back - shudder). I guess I'm drawn more to greens, blues, and purples more than I am to the pinks, oranges, and yellows.

I think the many hours spent with the colored pencil on the last project actually helped with this one - I think I learned a lot about color and being able to actually achieve some of the colors I'm after. I'm thrilled to have a better understanding in that area that I'm sure will carry over into other aspects of my work.

Who knows! Maybe now I'll feel a bit less threatened by chalk pastels. I'd love to try working on colored paper sometime soon.

Studio Battlefield

Today was a day I was looking forward to all week. My girls were on a field trip to an aquarium, but I had to stay behind because my son is doing standardized testing. That means all children were out of the house for a few hours this morning. I love having them around, but I can’t think of the last time I was alone in the house!

So little time – so much to do. I took the dog for a walk and then carved out some time in the studio.

First, I worked on a complementary pair of colors on the color wheel I mentioned before. This was only the 2nd set of colors I’ve gotten on there. It’s quite time consuming, trying to get the different tones. But, I think acrylics and I are starting to become friends.

The same can’t be said for another medium I dealt with today. I decided to warm-up with my “drawing game.” The subject: bicycle. The medium…my nemesis: chalk pastel.

I knew I was in trouble from the very beginning. A bike – narrow bars and spokes, numerous intricacies. Chalk pastels – chunky blocks with no fine tips for capturing those details I like so much. But, there was no backing down from the challenge.

Now, I happen to greatly admire a lot of art done in chalk pastel and wish I was more comfortable with the looseness that it requires. I love chalk pastel on a colored paper. However, I can’t stand all the chalk dust all over my work space, getting smudges of color and finger prints where I don’t want them. I love edges, pulling and pushing elements in space with color or value brought right up against it.

So, we duked it out for a while. More than once, I wanted to walk away from it out of annoyance. But, I know that I tend to get something out of an exercise if I just stick with it a little while.

I think the one highlight of this drawing session was in placing the atmospheric foliage on the horizon. I will admit that it can be easier to deal with background distance because of the smudginess of the medium.

Part of me would just like to ignore chalk pastel forever, and I suppose I probably could. But, as long as I keep seeing beautiful work with that medium, I think I'll keep coming back to it.

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.

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.