Sunday, July 08, 2007

Yosemite reflective colored pencil


When I lived in Northern California, my husband and I would go to Yosemite for a couple of days several times a year. He'd take large format photographs and I would attempt to either paint or draw. Plein Art at Yosemite during the summer is the pits. You have to contend with the bugs,heat, and the tourist. But what can I say...it's Yosemite and I love it there.
Yesterday I took an artist break and drove down to Pasadena to Dick Blick. I went to buy a couple of tubes of paint, but ended up buying a 24 pack of Derwent coloursoft pencils that were 1/2 off;two new art books;a Raphael travel set of watercolours, and 4 watercolour brushes.
So this morning, while my husband was working on the shaded side of the backyard, I took my new Derwent colored pencils and my Lama Li sketchbook outside and did this 8.5" x 11" colored pencil drawing in an impressionist style. The Derwent coloursoft pencils are nice, but would of liked a larger range of colors...I ended up getting some of my Prismacolors to enhance my drawing. Also, as much as I love my Lama Li sketchbook paper, the paper really isn't suited for color pencil work. It is fabulous for watercolors, but with colored pencil I found I had to really press hard on the surface to fill in the ridges
I really like working in an impressionist format and I completed this drawing in less than 2 hours.

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