New Drawing

[corvideye]

"Emergence" (Prismacolor Lightfast & regular colored pencils on Aquabee vellum bristol)
For some reason the color in the lower half is a little frosted in the scan, but this gives the general idea.

I just finished a new colored pencil drawing. I started it a few weeks ago during a store demo of Prismacolor's new lightfast colored pencil line. Usually I just do little impromptu sketches during demos (it's hard to do anything more focused and still interact with customers). But since I'm fairly comfortable with colored pencils, I thought I'd show the burnished method, which is my preferred way to work in that medium--building multiple color layers that are then blended with heavy pressure application of the final layers, totally filling in the white of the paper to create smooth solid color. By random default, I started with an imaginary flower in my usual favorite color blend. I liked the way that was coming out, so then I sketched in a background of random overlapping spiral shapes. I liked it enough that it seemed worth finishing at home. A few weeks later I did--mostly last Friday, then final touches this week.

In recent years I've had a hard time finishing art that doesn't have a specific deadline and purpose, so I'm pleased this actually got done before the impulse faded. I'm pretty happy with it, especially since it started out as just an improv doodle. There's a new type of art that I've been envisioning for several years as what I want to do next, but so far I haven't realized a full-fledged example. This is sort of a small practice gesture in that direction, in which color, light and pattern are equally the subject matter. The full-fledged vision would bring this sensibility to an image with human and/or animal figures and textile/costume elements. The right image and the right moment just hasn't found me yet... But once again this shows me that any piece can become meaningful to you as you work on it, even if the subject itself is not important; what matters is the process.

In colored pencil work, as in traditional watercolor, it's essential to reserve the whiteness of the paper for your highlight areas, rather than trying to add highlights back over color (you can do some of that, but it's never quite as good). My main critique of this is that I didn't know at first how I was going to color the background, so I ended up with some muddy areas right where I needed maximum brightness. Oh well, that's what happens when you improvise! I did learn a bit more about col. penc. problem solving in the process, though. Also, there are ways in which the lighting is still not entirely consistent, but in this case I don't mind that so much (what is the source of illumination, after all?). I really enjoyed playing with the picture plane by taking what should seem to be a flat decorative background pattern yet rendering and lighting it as if it were somehow as dimensional as the flower, thus also giving it a nonsensical sense of motion (are the dots rising, falling, or floating in place?). There's something about that I find intriguingly mysterious.