 |
| 9/26/22 Caran d'Ache Museum Aquarelle pencils on Canson XL 140 lb. paper |
Alice, our friend and neighbor, has done it again. Sometimes
it’s plums, sometimes it’s tomatoes, but whatever comes from her
garden is amazingly delicious as well as gorgeous. This year one of her
tomatoes was the size of a pumpkin! She was about to hand it to me when I
admired the equally beautiful chili peppers on her kitchen counter, especially
one with both red and green streaks. She knows we don’t eat hot peppers, but
she offered to lend me a few to sketch, which I happily accepted. I gave them
back as soon as I finished the sketch, but you can bet we kept and enjoyed the
tomatoes she gave us.
 |
| I wanted to show a photo of that tomato next to the pencils so you can see how huge it is! |
Believe it or not, I was trying to be looser and more painterly than I have been with some tomato still lives and get away from the botanical study look, but that’s always a challenge for me. At least I did not carefully draw each one of those highlights as I often have. Instead, I roughly marked where they were on each piece, applied the first layers of color, and then activated without trying to “draw” too much with the brush.
The other challenge was the purple plate. After finishing most of the sketch, I left the plate for the next day so I could think about what to do with it. Drawing it to the same degree of realism as the produce would detract, I thought, and I’ve been disappointed when I’ve done that in other still lives. This time, I tried leaving the plate “sketchy” and unfinished looking. I’m not sure about this look either, but I do like the interesting gray shadow I got by mixing the green and violet.
Hello Tina! I just recently got into watercolor pencils and I found your blog when looking for watercolor pencil artist who were also Urban Sketchers...and I am so glad I found you! Your blog is truly an inspiration for daily practice and committment!
ReplyDeleteI really love your sketch here and your style in general. I was wondering (since I'm still learning and experimenting), would you mind sharing how you get that beautiful effect of the pencil stroke while still activating the WCP? Do you activate only some parts and leave others untouched? Or do you activate the first layer and go over it with the pencil? Thanks in advance and lots of admiration and appreciation from Italy! Valentina
Thank you so much, Valentina, for your comments! I'm happy to hear that you are finding my blog inspiring and useful. I do "all of the above" that you asked questions about, depending on the effect I want. I find that water activation smooths out all the texture, so if I want to retain texture, I will sometimes go back over an area with dry pencil. In other places, I just leave the dry pencil unactivated. What's really cool about WCPs is that you can choose whether to activate or not, and the effect (as well as color intensity) will be totally different.
DeleteGrazie mille, Tina! :)
Delete