Metro Market Maples (and My Dry Pencil A-Ha Moment)

 

9/25/23 Metro Market parking lot, Wedgwood neighborhood

The slender parking-lot maples at Metropolitan Market are on my annual leaf-peeping tour because they often turn a brilliant, fiery red or at least bright orange and yellow. But this year they seem to be dull brownish-orange, and some are half-bare already. Our dry summer took its toll on trees.

My pencil a-ha moment: Last year I went through a couple of phases when I wanted to use dry colored pencils to work on specific experiments, like optical color mixing and secondary triads. In the field, however, I always feel like they are slower and less efficient to use than watercolor pencils: Activating them with water is the fastest, most efficient way to intensify color. And yet I’d like to learn to be more efficient with dry colored pencils because I’m so intrigued by their optical-mixing potential (an effect that gets lost when colors blend fluidly).

So I’m in that phase again. Since we have begun moving head-on into the rainy season, I’ll be sketching more from my mobile studio and coffee shops, which is a good opportunity to bring along different media. I filled my larger Sendak pencil roll with a careful selection of 13 Caran d’Ache Luminance and Derwent Lightfast colored pencils. To select colors, I used the same strategy as for my daily-carry watercolor pencils (described in my recent sketch kit update post).

This is the way the sketch looked before
I intensified the colors later at home.

When I stopped working on the sketch at left (from my mobile studio in the rain), I was disappointed by the wimpy colors and contrasts. Using an A6-size Uglybook (in white! Shocking, right?), I worked for about as long as I usually do in an A6 Hahnemühle with watercolor pencils, but I couldn’t get the colors to be as intense without the extra umph of water that I’ve come to depend on.

Normally I don’t fuss with a sketch after I leave the location, but the pencils had put me in experimental mode: Using the same pencils at home, I hit the page hard with color (never recommended, by the way, by colored pencils artists) until I got the degree of intensity and contrast I wanted (top of post) – and it only took another minute or two! Why couldn’t I do that in the car?

The answer is that at home, I had a hard desk surface, which made it much easier to apply color with the pressure I needed. My Hahnemühle has a hardcover, which gives me the same support while standing. But the Uglybook has a softcover, and in the car I didn’t have a hard surface for support. Although I use Uglybooks constantly while standing, I almost always use markers, which don’t require pressure. A-ha – a light bulb moment!

I looked around and found a small clipboard of the right size – and like the Uglybook, it fits in the Sendak’s largest pockets. Now I have a firm surface like a desk to slam the color down hard. Let’s see if this is the trick I need to make dry pencils work for me on location. If it does, I’ll look forward to brightening the blah, wet weather ahead with optical color mixing experiments.

Sendak fully loaded in my mobile studio.