Category: Colored pencil art

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Colored pencil art Drawing Illustration Friday Sketchbook Pages

Captured: Illustration Friday

Captured by TV

Little TV screens were recently installed in the elevators where I work. The company that programs them has their name proudly displayed: “Captivate TV”. I call it “Captive TV.” The programming includes snippets of news, bits of celebrity gossip, and advertising for stockbrokers and lawyers.

I always liked elevators as a place to have a few moments of peaceful empty time. I also enjoyed observing the interesting ways people behave socially (or anti-socially) on elevators. Sometimes I like to start a conversation and briefly get to know other humans who work in the giant hive called the Kaiser Building in Oakland. Now everyone stupidly stares at Captive TV.

What really irks me is that half the screen has the supposed news and the other half has advertising which always has something bouncing, moving, flashing. It’s almost impossible not to look at it. If you try to ionly read the news, it stays on the screen so long that you naturally continue to your right to read the blinking ad. So I try not to look at the screen at all. Now instead of peacefully taking a few quiet breaths as I transition from one part of my day to another, I spend my elevator time annoyed.

This was drawn on Canson Extra Heavy Vidalon tracing paper. I started with pencil first since I was composing an idea from my head and wasn’t quite sure what I was doing. I inked it with a Micron Pigma and erased the pencil. Some of the ink came off and smeared so I decided to color it with colored pencil to hide the slight smears. My watercolor pencils were handy so I used those. Then I tried adding water. Ooops. This paper isn’t designed for water. When I was done I realized I should have scanned the drawing and colored it in Photoshop. Oh well. Still no sign of stopping at 75% finished. There’s always the next drawing.

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Colored pencil art Drawing Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Summer Fruit in Watercolor & Inktense Pencils

fruit-wc-webOne hour sketch of a little bowl of summer fruit in watercolor (above)

Fruit-Inktense-web

Same sketch in Inktense watercolor pencils (above)

I finally tried out the Inktense pencils I got last week. They remind me of the really special coloring books I treasured when I was a kid that look normal until you paint on them with water and then color magically appears. With the Inktense pencils, the drawing is about 50% lighter before you add the water. First I tried doing self portraits with them and they came out ghoulish and awful–more like clowns or wanted posters. So I decided to try the Inktense with some bright summer fruit–a more appropriate application.

Once I’d done the ink drawing in my large watercolor Moleskine, I liked it so much I decided to paint it both in watercolor and the Inktense colored pencils. It’s so much fun to draw directly in ink this way– it teaches me about acceptance, I think, in just taking what I get and not fretting if it’s not perfect (a favorite mantra: You don’t have to be perfect to be wonderful and neither does your drawing!).

Since I wanted to use the same drawing twice, I scanned it and then painted the 1st drawing in my Moleskine with watercolor. Then I printed out the scanned drawing, and using a lightbox, traced it onto the next page of the Moleskine. I colored the second drawing in with the Inktense pencils and then brushed on water. One trick to controlling the Inktense pencils with water is to not use too much water and to frequently rinse the brush and slightly dry it. Otherwise you pick up too much pigment and smear it around where you don’t need or want it. Also, even though the pencil looks pale, apply it lightly or you end up with way too much pigment.

Inktense are fun, but they won’t replace my trusty watercolors. I know the Inktense drawing looks brighter and more vibrant, but it seems all tarted up to me somehow.

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Colored pencil art Drawing Every Day Matters Life in general Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

A bike ride for ink and coffee

Peets Coffee 4th Street

I took a Sunday afternoon bike ride to Berkeley’s 4th Street, an upscale little shopping street in a formerly industrial zone by the railroad tracks, about 4 miles from my house. People come there to do some recreational shopping and to dine, and many dress up in show-offy clothes. I felt a bit dorky arriving in my hand-me-down, shiny black bicycling shorts partially covered by a big, old white t-shirt with a B. Kliban picture of a cat painting a messy picture on the front, a bike helmet and bike shoes.

I found the shop, Castle in the Air, that carries Noodler’s Ink (highly touted by artists in the Every Day Matters group as the only waterproof ink that won’t clog fountain pens and great for use in the Lamy Safari pen). The gentleman working there insisted that Noodlers is not waterproof and showed me his smeared sample of the ink that he’d brushed with water (in a cool little handmade book with samples of all their many, many inks). While he was persuasive and fun to talk to (being another art supply lover and an artist) I decided to buy the ink and try it for myself. My Lamy is supposed to arrive tomorrow so I’ll see whether the combination is as great as people say it is (and if it magically makes my drawings as good as theirs!)

Then I crossed the street to Peets Coffee, got an iced latte, and found a table in a hidden corner on their little patio. I drew this with my Micron Pigma (which IS waterproof) in my large watercolor Moleskine. I added some watercolor pencil and water with my water brush but decided to finish it at home with real paint since I didn’t have the right colors.

I also experimented with adding some overheard conversation fragments into the drawing. The guy in the middle with the sun glasses didn’t stop talking the whole time I was there, so many of my scribbles are from his stories about his herniated disk, learning to drive, rude New Yorkers (he’s one), Oprah’s show about women being embarassed to talk to their gynecologists, Italians, and on and on. Instead of being annoyed, as I might have been, it was fun being a spy and writing down bits of his blathering.

As I got up to leave I noticed an attractive man sitting at a table in the sun who was watching me and smiling. I smiled back and felt flattered for a moment until I saw him moving to my table out of the sun as I walked away.