Saturday 8 August 2009

Waterlily WIP 3


More work done on the green leaves and tweaking elsewhere. I have burnished the water with a paper torchon and I think some of the subtle colours have been lost in the process - sigh! I am happy with the flower, though, and the general colour scheme and composition.

Some thoughts on process

I always have this dilemma about how much saturation of colour to lay down. I do like some paper texture to be showing as it is, after all, a pencil drawing. Also, I do not generally aim for photorealism as I really do not see the point of that when you may as well have the photograph to stand for itself . However, when you have a subject depicting smooth surfaces, such as the leaves and the water in this picture, the grain of the paper is more of a hindrance than a help. I could have done it more effectively on smooth Bristol Board perhaps?

Anyway, I'm sure I could improve on this - some things about it are really niggling me - however, I am getting bored with it now and am itching to start something new!

NB. Did anyone else see that strange orangey yellow ball in the sky today? Can't be certain but rumour has it that it was actually the sun! Well fancy that!

4 comments:

alison said...

Hi Janet
I think it's lovely and i really like the water drops. They get the eye moving round the whole thing - perhaps a bonus for once that it was raining when you took the photos! :o)

I look forward to your next project. I am still staring at my coloured pieces of colorfix wondering what the heck to try on each!

alison

Janet Pantry said...

Thanks Alison - appreciated! I like Colorfix, you can get strong colour on it quite quickly. If you choose a paper colour akin to the dominant colour of your subject matter it can save a lot of time. You can also put lights over darks which is a real bonus.

Gillian Mowbray said...

This is looking wonderful - I'm so glad to have found your blog.
I agree about the photo-realism dilemma - it seems to be inherent with CP work that we strive for it but also want the medium to shine. LOL

I see you use Prismas and Coloursoft. I've recently acquired some Coloursoft but after using Prismas I'm not liking them at all and have gone back to the Prismas, even though the wretched things break upon sharpening! x

By the way - my word verification is 'cosyst' Isn't that nice!

Janet said...

Thanks Gillian! Yes, I use Prismas and Coloursoft on Colorfix cause they seem to work well on it. I do like my Polychromos best, though, on other papers. Such a shame about the Prismas - the colours are so nice but I think the quality of the pencils is not good, they always break for me too.

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