Thursday, April 29, 2010

Wednesday Night Creativity

So this Wednesday Night Creativity has really caught on with me and I love it! Last night, I went to T's house. While her Significant Other, T, was smokin' ribs on the porch, we did a still life that consisted of oranges, bowl of limes, a coconut, a bottle and lilacs in a vase. This is my first attempt at the still life:



This was done with charcoal that I've been holding onto since art school. (I swear, I don't throw anything away). I don't think I succeeded in trying to make that orange half look real juicy and shiny. Which is the challenge for me and what I'm aiming to achieve with these still life projects. I also haven't used charcoal in some time. But it's also nice to break away from what you are normally used to (in my case: watercolors). J said that he really liked how I worked the values.

Then I did it in color:


(this picture was taken at my desk at work this morning as my phone had no juice last night). This was created with Prismacolors. I didn't have a complete spectrum of colors in pencil form, I tried to kick those colors up a notch with a lot of layering.
What's funny is that years ago I started doing a lot of my work just with the prismacolors. Dry, no mess, no fumes.... but they weren't rich enough in color for me unless you had hours to spend coloring and constantly sharpening your pencil. Someone had suggested that I put a watercolor layer down first as that would give almost like a head start in getting that true color saturation. And I did, and then 2 layers and then 3 and then I just started doing more watercolors than anything else. So this piece is like almost a throwback into time. I could have spent more time on those lilacs, but there were so many.... and then dinner was ready :)
We had ribs, chicken, collard greens and cole slaw. OH SO GOOOD and then Chocolate Bread Pudding for dessert. YUM..... - More cardio at the gym this week.



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