26 Wires

 

6/17/26 Maple Leaf neighborhood

A woman came out of the house next to where I was standing. After admiring my sketch in progress, she looked up at the scene I was sketching.

“Don’t put in all those ugly wires!” she warned me sternly. “I counted – there are 26 wires at this intersection!”

You can see how far that suggestion went. 😉

Technical notes: I’m pretty pleased with my proactive thinking and planning (a rare occurrence) on this one. Almost always, I paint the sky after I’ve drawn all the trees and other elements against the sky, which requires fussy cutting around those elements with the paint. I do this because: 1. I usually don’t remember to paint the sky first. 2. When I do (rarely) remember, I have to wait for the sky to dry completely before I can draw over it, which annoys me.

This time, I had drawn all the trees first as usual. Then I used a dark purple non-soluble Derwent Drawing pencil to draw the fence and street shadows. It occurred to me that I could draw the utility poles and all those wires first – before the sky. Then I painted right over the non-soluble lines. No smearing and no waiting for the sky to dry! That sequence was an ideal use of mixed media for strategic purposes.