Month: December 2011

Finished – The Wrong One

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At the 11th hour, I decided to add a second arm to the captured toad. I felt the composition was lacking. Thankfully, I have several reference photos and found a suitable toad hand. I roughly photoshopped it on to my reference and then lightly sketched the new hand on to the drawing, looking at my computer screen. (Some day I will know toad anatomy enough to be able to draw a toad hand from memory!)

 

It was terrifying to go to my mostly completed drawing with an eraser and a razor blade and pull away an arm-shaped patch of pencil. The layers were very thick and the paper was rough and abused underneath them all. Thankfully Prismacolor’s Peach pencil really helped blend any parts of the hand back in once I had destroyed them. I think it ultimately worked out. Here is the .gif of the piece from start to finish.

That thumb was too much “blank” space for me. It’s my thumb, and it just isn’t that massive in real life. I am happy with the decision. It shows that a drawing just isn’t finished until it’s finished!

Now the toad looks even more resigned to the sexual harassment he is being subjected to; as if even he has accepted the cliche and it is a given that he will be snatched up and test-smooched from time to time.  Never mind that the fairy tale does not advise the kissing of random amphibians.

This drawing is 100% Prismacolor Colored Pencils – on Stonehenge paper, of course. The finished presentation will be a more vertical crop. Behold:

I am going to enter it into the Prismacolor contest right now.  Looking for a toad arm last night, I think I found my next drawing, too; another view of this guy struggling to get free. I could use the practice drawing hands of all species.

The Wrong One

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“The Wrong One” is the working title for this piece that I hope to enter in Prismacolor’s art contest. I was able to start it the other night. Looking at all of the other entries; this is going to be tough. I have about four hours into this piece so far. The .gif shows the process I take pretty well. The last frame shows where I am now. This is the part where I start losing confidence that the background is going to turn out all right. I have begun burnishing the light spots in the background with Prismacolor’s Cream.  Over the cream color, I can add back both light highlights and darker green.

I plan on finishing the background about 90% before moving on to the hand and toad. I think that will take three or four more evenings of work. It feels really good to be getting back into a drawing. Stay tuned to see if I mess it up!

Back to the Drawing Board

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Get it! Because I literally am BACK at DRAWING on my BOARD after National Novel Writing Month, I have dubbed this post “Back to the Drawing Board.” Nice!

Not that I’m finished with the novel, yet. Both my husband and I were able to reach the 50,000 word goal a day early thanks to some fresh hop beer and some good music. I still have about 10,000 words left in the story, I think. I would like to finish this year. I think I have a lot more 2011 goals to finish than New Years’ Resolutions at this point.

First, I needed to begin my entry into the Prismacolor contest. I re-started one of the drawings I had been working on and hid my Luminance pencils from myself. Even if my drawing makes it nowhere in the contest, I thought it would be fun to go back to using only Prismas for a change. I predict I will miss the super layering, non breaking powers of the Caran d’Ache Luminance, which will of course be great validation to buy more. Buah ha ha!

Meanwhile, have this sketch I did to try and win a commission. I never heard back about it, but it was a fun little drawing competed in a day. Toad Thinker: