Goochland Landscape

I finally took out a piece of UART paper and did something with it. I have a bunch of photos I took in Goochland county a few years ago and I've been wanting to draw them. I tried one last year... colored pencil on Stonehenge paper. It came out ok but it needed help, also I had problems with a workable fixative I tried on it. Here's the one I just finished....


It only took a few hours to draw. It's 8"x6" ish on Uart 600 paper using Prisma Colored Pencils. It's a sanded paper... actually looks like a piece of sandpaper. The great thing about it is you can use lights to go over darks!! Which is a very exciting thing with colored pencils. I can create a more painterly piece without having to use paint. I have much more control over a pencil than I do a paintbrush.

The scan didn't work so I took a picture of this and it still doesn't show the blue sky. It is blue... really. I did use a light orange undercolor on it and that's what is showing through.

Thanks for looking!

Tim

Finished! Portrait of My Kids

I think I'm finished with this portrait. I probably could go darker and push the values but I'm really happy with the likeness and the liveliness of it. So what I'm saying basically is I don't want to screw it up.

This scan is closer to real life than the other two. I changed settings until it looked ok. The others look too solarized or something.




This has been a positive process for me. I haven't drawn realistically on this scale in a long time. I love doing whimsical illustrative stuff but I think I'll consider doing more portraits in the future.

Thanks for looking!!

Portrait of My Kids-WIP

Been working on a portrait of my kids. Found a great picture.... not too silly and not too serious. I'm using graphite on Strathmore 400 Dry Media Paper. The image is around 7"x7". It's been awhile since I've attempted this. I did a sketch of my son and a self portrait in the last two weeks for practice. I tried my son's portrait on Stonehenge paper but the paper just isn't for me.

Here's the first session. A WIP stands for Work in Progress if you didn't know.


I'm building up values and detail. Just plugging away basically.



I'm not going to get too detailed in this drawing. I like the looseness of it. Besides I don't know if I could get realistically tight anyway. Thanks for looking!

Courthouse Drawing

Here's a new commission I just finished. It 's of a courthouse in Bedford County Tennessee. Here's a link to a picture of it..... http://www.mybedfordcounty.com/Court_House_snow.jpg

Since this was a little bigger and more detailed drawing I bumped up the size from my standard 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" to around 3 1/2" x 3 1/2". I moved a tree and put it around the side for them... no charge!

Thanks for looking!

My House!

Finally got around to doing our house! Here it is in all its splendor. What's nice is that you can make the yard look a lot nicer in these drawings. The difficult part about this drawing was that our gable ends are atypical. I call them 'splayed gables' but that's a term I made up. So I wanted to include that feature because I think it's cool but it reads funny on this drawing. Anyway the cobbler's family got their shoes if you know what I mean.

Here's the info if you want your house drawn! Thanks for looking!

Another House!

Been awhile since I posted but I've been doing a few things here and there. Here's a drawing I did of my brother's house. Like the others it's pencil on illustration board, ATC size ... 3 1/2" x 2 1/2". For the trees in the background I used a carbon pencil to make them really dark. I read that the trick is not to build up with pencil first but to put the carbon down first!! Then you can go over it with pencil if you want. It really does make a difference. Feel free to try it at home.

If you are interested in having your home immortalized in a drawing all the info you need is here!

Thanks for looking!

The All Male Snail Band!

This is a new digital image I did for Hambo Stamps!


Now the back story..... this was from one of the stories I tell my kids. There was a big parade that day in Marmoosia where the Marmoots live. The 'All Male Snail Marching Band' were to lead the way. Of course being snails they were awful slow and didn't get very far after an hour of 'marching'. So someone had the bright idea of turning the parade around so the snails were now last instead of first. The rest of the parade went off without a hitch!


This is a card I made with the digital image. I printed it on cardstock then I used a graphite pencil to do the background and didn't do too much erasing before I went over it all with Prismacolor pencils. Kind of liked the 'dirty' look for this. I like the way it turned out, the snail kind of 'pops' if you know what I mean. Thanks for looking!!

Tim