Yesterday as I left work, a chorus of hundreds of voices greeted me. No, I’m not going crazy; it was the toads! They were calling loud and clear in the swamp across the street. The males call out to the ladies in spring. It’s a meat market over there! Fascinated by all things toad, their mating is one of the more interesting and intense things about them. The males mob the females, vying for a chance at fertilizing her eggs. The sound makes me a little twitchy; ready to grab my camera and catch a glimpse of their fascinating behavior. Maybe I am crazy!

Anyway, I clearly am still enamored with bufo americanus, even if I haven’t been drawing all that much lately. I did finish a small piece just to get it out of my head. “Little Black Dress” is a toad in a little black dress. When people talk about that iconic piece of wardrobe that every woman NEEDS in their closet, I envision myself looking like this gal. They don’t make a little black dress for me, if you know what I mean! 🙂 So here is my toad in her LBD, looking less than thrilled about it.  You can buy prints of her in my Etsy shop.

This is my first drawing done 100% with Caran d’Ache Luminance pencils. These pencils are expensive but proven lightfast and do not have the breakage problems of Prismacolor pencils. They are worth the extra cost for that reason alone; I have never had one sharpen poorly or lead snap at all. I get down and dirty with my pencils and press hard, so a lead that can withstand the pressure is great.

My other good news that isn’t that the toads are back is that my piece “The Wrong One” was selected to be in the Colored Pencil Society of America’s 20th International Expo! It is in Covington, Kentucky which is in the greater Cincinnati area. We are planning on visiting the Artist’s Reception in August. I can’t wait to see all of the colored pencil works up close and examine the techniques and finishes used by the best colored pencil artists in the world.  They look so smooth on the internet; it is tough to get a read on what the finish of a colored pencil piece looks like.

It is a great honor to have been juried in to this show. It consistently has amazing work. I’m so excited I could sing!

“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!

After two months of drawing, I think I’m finally finished with my latest colored pencil piece. “Reflection.” Thank God! I still want to do a mixed media piece to enter into the CPSA‘s Explore This expo, and the deadline is November 15th! The Colored Pencil Society has been a great motivator form e this year. This will be the fifth finished piece I have done in 2011. I usually finish one or two at the most. Here’s “Reflection.” I may enter it into next year’s International Expo, but because it is 100% colored pencil it doesn’t qualify for the CPSA’s upcoming show.

I can already see more things I’d like to change.  We’re close, though.  I took good photos along the way and hope to have an animated gif of the process put together soon. This is the same toad who posed for me in “Lipstick.” I liked the reflection idea and whipped up a three way mirror with some tiles from Micheal’s.

My next piece will feature a new fabulous amphibian model (although to be fair, all of my models look pretty much alike.) It will be colored pencil with some acrylic paint to qualify it for “Explore This.” It is also more in the vein of “Lipstick.” I can’t wait to get started.