Nautilus

 Mixed Media

21 x 15"

Strathmore Smooth Bristol Board

This is a piece I recently completed with the hopes of gaining more experience with colored pencils.  This is a new medium for me even though I purchased Faber-Castell Polychromos some time ago and added Caran d'Ache Luminance pencils for this project, I have completed only one other piece and used a very limited palette.  I really wanted to practice layering and shading and include other mediums in the mix.

Because this was more about color application and I didn't want to think about design, I dowloaded one of Ben Kwok's wonderful templates from the Facebook Ornation Creation group page and enlarged it at a local print shop.  The image itself measures 15 x 11".  I found out this was quite a bit of real estate to cover, this took about 45 hours to complete!

 Detail of center.

Detail of Golden Interference Orange Fluid Acrylic Paint

The interference paint in some areas really made things pop.  From one angle the paint appears orange and from the opposite angle it appears teal.  The little ovals all around the edge and the swirl in the center were painted with Golden Iridescent Copper Light. This photo also shows the need for mastering the waxy bloom of layering colored pencils.  Even with the use of Gamsol between some of the layers, my heavier dark color application at the end produced bloom.  Gotta work on that!

Speaking of layers,the following shots show the progression of color application which began with a light wash of Daniel Smith Hansa Yellow Light watercolor and then worked up from there with the Caran d'Ache Luminence colored pencils.

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NATALIE'S GOLDFINCH

NATALIE'S GOLDFINCH
14 X 17"  On Bristol Vellum
Colored Pencil , Ink , Graphite & Gold Leaf

This piece was a request from my daughter for my grand-daughter's birthday in May.  It was also my first experiment on Bristol vellum with colored pencils.  I love working with the Faber Castell Polychromos, layer upon layer of shading and texture.  It's a workout on the hands though!  Micron pens .05 and .01 were used on the ribbon.  The ribbon was a challenge, I actually had about eight hours into this piece before I put it aside and started over from scratch.  The ribbon was just not working and there are a few things I learned in the process that I will put into practice when I include a tangled ribbon in future projects. Helen Williams' e-book available on her blog A Little Lime, was a tremendous help.

All shading outside of the ribbon, "N" and goldfinch was done with 2B, 6B and 8B graphite pencils and a paper stub. One thing I'd like to pass on and which was new to me; when using a blending stub it's good to sand the end frequently so the colored pencil doesn't build up on the end of the stub making blending of the graphite far more difficult.  I couldn't help touching the edge of the colored pencil area as I was adding my shadows and noticed problems as I tried to blend the graphite.

Lastly, I just had to add some gold leaf in a few spots and was very happy with the outcome.  Another word of caution about the gold leaf sizing on paper.  Give it plenty of time to dry!  If you smear it outside of the desired area you get to spend some really anxious moments gently removing it from the paper with an Xacto knife!

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