What have I been up to?

 It's been 8 days since my last post and I am trying to add content once a week. But hey, I'm the only one checking on me so it's no big deal unless of course you're following me and you want to see what I've been up to. 

It happened again. Color has once again gotten the better of me. I painted this white tiger from Wildlifereferencephotos using Pan Pastels, Caran D'ache pastel pencils, a bunch of blending tools and black Stonehenge cold press water color paper. It's 9 x 12 inches. I am pleased with it. I really like the way I handled the background.  If you click on the image of the tiger you can watch a timelapse demonstration of the creation of the  painting.

This was not the case with this image of a house sparrow I painted using Pan Pastels and a few pastel pencils. But when I was finished I just didn't want to deal with color even though both of these pieces were done with a limited primary color palette.

Okay. You must have seen this coming. I jumped back into the "Sometimes Color Gets in the Way" mindset. The chickadee is a bird I've painted and drawn before. I like the bird. It never fails to inspire a sweet image. I used white Pan Pastel, Caran D'ache white pastel pencil and black charcoal. It was done in thirty minutes. 

This portrait is based on a selfie I took of myself five years ago. Some friends and family members didn't like the photo and felt that, while the work is good, I am much prettier. I  love these folks, some of whom haven't seen me in a while, forget how old I am now but that's a story for another time. I am please with the work. I spent two days going back to it; touching up, making adjustments to placement and shadow. It's a good portrait. It looks like the selfie which looks like me. What I like most about this particular self portrait is that I remind myself of a Tomte, a Scandinavian elf. 

But, when I was done, I wasn't happy about where I was going creatively. l felt I need to work on white paper as well as black; I needed to create form out of light just as I had created form out of darkness. There is no video of this portrait or the chickadee. It's been two years since I drew. Really drew. That was the last time color got in the way. 

I started with charcoal. I have a nice collection of charcoal including some lovely pencils from Winsor and Newton. It was a disaster and I didn't get beyond the background.  I put away the charcoal and got out my box of graphite pencils and blending sponges and created this drawing of a Great White Egret. Thanks to Lynn Smith who took the photo and gave me permission to use it.  

I do like this piece and it already has a home to go to. I used a rendering technique in which I covered the paper with powdered graphite and initially drew in the egret with an eraser. Then I built up the contrast with increasingly darker pencils until I come up with this image. I did video tape this one but it won't be up for three weeks or a bit more. This drawing isn't as fine as I would have liked but that is largely because of the technique so my next piece will be on white paper (I have so much beautiful white paper). No rendering. No powder. A bit of blending with stumps and or sponges and erasers. I don't know what the subject is yet. But I'm back with graphite; ultimately my dearest medium. 

Sometimes I feel like the pendulum in a grandfather clock (as opposed to the one in the Pit and the Pendulum by Poe) just swinging back and forth never able to find a landing place. But sometimes I realize it's the only way to grow as a visual artist. Sometimes my work is brilliant. Sometimes it's not. But always it's fun; absorbing; meditative. Time doesn't matter whether I'm creating masterpieces and not masterpieces. I'm thinking about the Ticonderoga #2 pencil. You can do so much with it.