Colored Pencil Week Six

The Homework Challenge from Week Five was started in last week's class. A landscape, West Beach Sunset, was drawn using water soluble colored pencil on a bumpy, student grade water color paper and opened up with a brush and water to provide back lighting. The homework was to continue the landscape using the set of 24 Prismacolor Premier wax based colored pencils.

Chris Dougherty

Mary Vetere

 While each painting has beautiful backlighting, all three artists mentioned how the paper fought heavy applications of the wax pencils, but that light came through from the open spaces.

Katie Bull                                              

After the critique, we prepared for a portrait painting of Dr.Shui-ying Hu, a Chinese Botanist  of high esteem, who died last year at 102. She is being honored in April by the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, and we have been given permission to use the photo for painting. First, we watched a film of Alberto Giacometti the famous artist, painting a portrait drawing. We watched this film twice to learn his device of starting with the midline.  http://youtu.be/QS0PzOwfmHo

Next we made a chart of one and a half inch circles, experimenting with many possibilities for flesh tones.

 Starting with the peach pencil, a value scale graduated from the outer circle to the interior. Several colors were used. Subsequently, layers of two and even three colors  were graduated in preparation for the final painting. Last we focused on specific features; an eye, nose, mouth, etc. .

It will be two weeks before we meet again to see what progress has been made. 

Colored Pencil Week Five

Four Weeks of working with the new medium of Colored Pencils demonstrated how talented and hard working the artists using them are!

The Homework Wall from the Week Four Challenge:

Top Row: Jane Tocco, Marcia Seward, Mary Vetere, Katie Bull
Lower Row: JoAnn Fossa, Linda Harvey, Mary Healy, Pam Price, Chris Dougherty

 Homework Challenge in Week Four week was to simplify the visual images in the Day Lily photo painting realistically or abstractly or anywhere in between. We were treated to a breath taking display.

All of the paintings were done with the 24 pencil Prismacolor Set.

Each Artist met the challenge in a distinctive way, choosing a single motif, a double motif; background or no background.

 After the spirited critique in which a lot of satisfaction with the work and the medium was expressed, we explored ways of putting backlighting into our paintings by using water soluble pencils and sketching from this week's homework challenge.

The Painting Challenge for Week Five is to paint this West Beach Sunset employing  both water-soluble pencils and Prismacolor Premier Pencils.

Despite the new snow, Spring is scheduled to arrive this week. Remember to double click on images you want to enlarge. Thank you for visiting our Garage School of Art/

Colored Pencil Week Four

The Homework Challenge from Week Three was to take something from the refrigerator and paint it using only three primary colors. The Homework Wall was ablaze in color with a few renditions of sky and sunset from the previous week's challenge, as well as a very healthy selection of fruits and vegetables from well stocked refrigerators.

Homework Wall; Week Four

Chris Dougherty Broccolini on Strainer

Jane Tocco Apple

Mary Healy Eggplant

The Critique focused on getting the pencils to do what the artists wanted them to do; and on using the materials to produce a balanced result.

Katie Bull Pepper

Mini Exhibit by JoAnne Fossa

"I do not invent the picture. On the contrary I find it already there in nature; I just have to free it." Vincent Van Gogh. After reading a page from the tome Van Gogh The Life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith concerning the compositional device of simplifying and abstracting, we watched a video produced by the Portland Museum of Art that corresponds to a current exhibit of the work of Lois Dodd: http://youtu.be/fzC8lt168pk

The exercise for the week is to start making a chart for each of the colors in the Prismacolor 24 box.

Beth Shipley

Chris Dougherty

Everyone did the exercise in their own style, introducing Canary Yellow to the colors as they are positioned in the tin.

Katie Bull

Mary Healy

The Painting for the week, as well as the challenge, is to simplify the visual images in the photographs below, painting realistically or abstractedly or something in between.

The day lilies are a happy memory of drawing in the garden last summer, and hope that Spring will arrive early.

Colored Pencil Week Three

Cathy Ebling with Sanibel Sunsets and Roses to Draw.

And the homework was.......skies from The Life of Pi and Sanibel Sunset. Mary Vetere and Katie Bull mined their imaginations and treated us to many beautiful skies on the Homework Wall. Chris, JoAnne, Mary, Katie, and Marcia also explored the new medium of colored pencils and participated in the critique in helpful ways to all of us. As it was Cathy Ebling's Birthday, and she miraculously appeared in complimentary colors, we honor her here.

Week Three Rose by Marcia Seward

Week Three Rose II by Marcia Seward

Marcia Seward Photographed Rose Motifs for drawing this Week.

Most of our class time was spent creating a color wheel using Prismacolor Crimson , Blue Violet, and Canary Yellow. The homework for this week is to draw something from the refrigerator using those three primary colors and their mixtures. 

Colored Pencil Week Two

This week we spoke about the work on the homework wall, discussing the differences experienced between the rough and smooth sides of Bristol Board.

 Warm ups were done drawing the bouquet of daffodils on the table, as well as selections from the food magazine Edibles.

The second chart was made using a tonal technique: holding the pencil flat with a simple up and down stroke, a value chart was created. Keeping to a light pressure, color was applied into each square one more time than the previous square. At the end, gaps were filled in by applying pressure equal to the value of that square. This is tricky business and needs a lot of experience to perfect.

The homework is thumbnails of skies using the descriptions in the hand-out:

The Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Chapter 78 pg. 215 :

There were many skies.

The sky was invaded by great white clouds, flat on the bottom but round and billowy on top.

The sky was completely cloudless, of a blue quite shattering to the senses.

The sky was a heavy, suffocating blanket of grey cloud, but without promise of rain. The sky was thinly overcast.

The sky was dappled with small, white, fleecy clouds.

The sky was streaked with high, thin clouds that looked like a cotton ball stretched apart.

The sky was a featureless milky haze.

The sky was a density of dark and blustery rain clouds that passed without delivering rain.

The sky was painted with a small number of flat clouds that looked like sandbars.

The sky was a mere block to allow a visual effect on the horizon: sunlight flooding the ocean, the vertical edges between light and shadow perfectly distinct.

The sky was a distant black curtain of falling rain.

The sky was many clouds at many levels, some thick and some opaque, others looking like smoke.

Run To The Mountains: The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume One 1939-1941

From Tuesday, February 25, 1941

First it was bright, then an interesting storm with the snow flying parallel to the ground, then bright again with a Rome-Florida-Bermuda sky making holiday all over the sunny hills, and small orange clouds, dazzling with a kind of light and lovely fire hung in the sky like clouds in a Giovanni Bellini picture, and the whole business was gayer than any worlds fair I ever heard of.

Now the sun was below the hills, but the sky was the cleanest and clearest blue you ever saw and in it a couple of light, fiery clouds, like in Bellini’s pictures again.

The Study for the Week is Sanibel Sunset  employing both Linear and Tonal Techniques:

Remember to click on the image to enlarge it. Happy Painting!

Colored Pencil Week One

After eighteen weeks of drawing we decided to add the dimension of color with Prismacolor Premier Colored Pencils. The first steps in the medium were how to sharpen the pencils evaluating the use of the electric pencil sharpener and a brass, hand held sharpener. Watching the electric sharpener chew up my indigo pencil was enough to convince us to take the longer, safer route with a hand held sharpener.

Next, we rearranged our 24 pencil sets, cooler tones before warmer of the same color, sticking with our Impressionist palette of yellow, red, blue, violet, green, brown, white and black.

 The next step was to practice some pencil techniques holding the pencil with a traditional underhand grip. Once we had a few linear techniques under our belts, we proceeded to draw a red onion from observation.

Taking time to lightly lay in color using linear technique and not rushing the application, beautiful drawings were completed. Below, my demonstrated drawing:

The onions themselves will be sliced and placed into the slow cooker with a stick of butter to cook until they are caramelized!