Good Girl/Bad Girl

"Good Girl/Bad Girl" 48" x 36" colored pencil, gouache, ink and paper collage on board.

Gifts from fairies are strange.
Rewards falling from mouths?

A good, humble daughter, hardworking without complaint and disinterested in material gain is rewarded for her kindness: with rubies, diamonds and pearls that fall from her mouth each time she speaks!
Her wicked stepsister is only interested in personal gain and gratification. She is henceforth punished for her grandiosity with toads and snakes falling from her lips.

Here the two girls are linked into one, two sides of the same coin. One side exploits the other. The Good Girl, whose immaterial nature is irreverently rewarded with material blessings, her words forever lost in the tumbling forth of jewels. Does this symbolize the value of kind words, or is it just the objectification of a girl whose is now reduced to life as a candy dispenser? The Bad Girl who unapologetically sought this verbal bounty, silently stares at us, confronting our attraction to those who seek their fortune ruthlessly, regardless of the reptilian consequences.

Dryad finished, and the new work.

"Dryad" 36" x 18" colored pencil, acrylic, and paint pen on board
She's hanging at JRB Gallery until the end of the month.

This work in progress, is based on goldielocks and the three bears, the chair is cut out of paper and I haven't decided if this is where it will end up. We'll see! the photo is also in reverse, because I took it with the photo booth application.

All The Way To The End

Tomorrow is my Opening Reception. I have 24 pieces hanging and I cannot wait. I've already had three pre-sales before the opening, and I'm going to feel so good seeing those red dots on the wall tomorrow! Please come join me at JRB.

This is the last piece I finished for the show, I haven't had it professionally photographed yet, but a very sharp image should be showing up soon on my flickr. Until then enjoy this little peek behind the curtain. These photos are a bit dark and yellow, but you get the idea. Why dark? Because incandescence lights are relaxing. And I don't like to make process shots into a big production because that creates too much pressure.

Here you can see the first three layers of the piece, the conté sketch, green pencil for shadows and blue for the first of the face paint.

Below I have added the yellow and pink pencil for the face paint, as well as finished laying in green for the shadows.

Jumping ahead, below I have finished the skin tone and have moved onto sketching in the background patterns. If you would like to read more about the layering technique I use to create my skin tones, check out this entry: In Process...

Below, I've gone ahead and thrown some underpainting into the piece so I can see past all the white, I like to think that underpainting will all be covered up so I don't get to precious, however I often like the results and end up using some of the underpainting. In this case I kept the yellow in a great deal of the piece but totally painted out the green in the dress.

Here I've masked off portions of the background design, (see the video below for removal) and I've started adding the background details, this was all very intuitive and happened very quickly and naturally. After that I worked very slowly and over thought almost everything to avoid messing up all that was already good. I haven't sat and just stared at a piece this much in quite sometime.

Below you'll see more background details. I added the vines around the edges and settled on an under paint color for her dress, grey, which I also worked into portions of the background to tie everything together. Not only are designs in the background masked off, but so is her skin and hair so that I can paint more freely. All the splatters on the skin are actually on a layer of frisket.

Below, the background and her dress are finished, consisting of many layers of translucent acrylic paint, drips and outlines of paint pen.

Here is a video of me taking the frisket off of my piece, I'll go back into the blank spaces with paint pen. I also use frisket to block off the skin and hair, so that I can freely paint the background. Why not paint the background first you ask? Well, because I don't like to, and I find that the finished personality informs color and form in the background more.

My wonderful studio engineer and father applies the high gloss varnish to the background. He's much better with sprays than I am. *Note that the colored pencil of her skin and hair are still masked off with frisket, I will removed the mask later, revealing the pencil.

The finished piece! hanging at JRB Art At The Elms.

"Dryad" 36" x 18" colored pencil, acrylic, gouache and paint pen on board

Event TONIGHT!

Come see two of my pieces, "Sphinx" and my collaboration w/ tribalbot, "Unwillingly Wilted" tonight at City Arts Center there will be wining, dining, great music and wonderful art from some of the best artists in the state. I hope you can join me.

Event Happens,

@ City Arts Center in the OKC fairgrounds,

from 5:30 to 8:30pm Feb. 24. 2010

Check out the link for full information:

CityArtsCenter.org

trepanation

"Attempts At Seeing Into The Future"

graphite, acrylic, colored pencil and marker on board.

This piece was a quick choice kind of experience, it went from idea to execution within a matter of hours. I am happy. It is a raw piece, not in appearance but in feeling, there is a lot of my mind in it, a lot of what I am experiencing in my life right now is tucked into the corners, so to speak. Sometimes the best choices are the ones you make when you are not aware there are choices.

Holding Together Our Existence

These are the first two in a series of elementals I am working on.

You can see these first two in person at the JRB Show this March.

I am going to create Earth and Air over the next few months.

!!! excited artist here !!!

"Water" 18" x 14" colored pencil and acrylic on board.

"Fire" 18" x 14" graphite, colored pencil and gouache on board.

a first go at it

"Better Than Her Bite"

7"x 5" colored pencil, gel pens and gouache on board.

Terrible Photograph. Blurring and a little Flat.

good enough for some blog-age.

So. I've been drawing mouth hats for... well over a year now, and I love them, however I love them very stylized and graphic in my sketch books, and that esthetic has been the rock to my realistic renderings hard place. Did that make sense? I have been sitting on my hands trying to figure out how to marry the two, and been a totally chicken about it. Until now. This is the first study, I just went for it, and I'm fairly happy. I didn't allow myself to think about it much at all for fear of once again over thinking, and just dove in the with a model I liked from the 40's (thank you flickr commons) and some ink. It's very bright and carnival. I want to play with harmonizing the mediums a bit more, and get a little darker and bring the hats a bit more into the third dimension. So, now that I've taken the weight of doing it once off my shoulders, doing it again and again seems... no longer daunting, but exciting.

ray gun girl

"still working on the right title for this piece..."

24" x 18" colored pencil, graphite and paper collage on board.

This is my friend Alex, I took the source photo at a gathering that after the fact came to be known as the white face blue nose party ... baby powder/pool chalk. We all talked in Russian accents all night. I got several great shots that night, I'll be using another one soon. The collar, gun and goggles were all created by my friend Daniel. Lovely metal work, they're radical. During this particular shot and the ones surrounding it Alex was interacting with a poster of Edvard Munch's "The Scream". It was great. in fact, here's one from the set, so you can see for yourselves.

Dream

24" x 18" colored pencil, acrylic, paint pen and paper collage on board

In Full Bloom

--Above is a detail of a piece I just finished, while it was still in process. I have dealt with much more obvious and intense blooms, but this is the best photo I have of one thus far. If you look at the middle of the scalp you will see a strip through it running down into the leather strap, that is much more dark and rich than its surroundings, that is where I have wiped away the bloom, and revealed the original colors.--

I've been wanting to write about wax bloom for several months, but I haven't been able to find any good visual examples online, and being a visual thinker, this has kept me milling about, waiting for my own blooms, because there must be an example! Well, I wait no longer, let's begin.

Almost all my pieces bloom. what is blooming? It is a side effect of using colored pencils. After a drawing has had time to sit, one might say settle, the pigment and its carrier the wax will separate, leaving the wax resting on top in a cloudy layer with the pigment underneath. Dark colors will look dull and washed out, it won't be as detectable on lighter areas but that doesn't mean it hasn't happened and that your drawing isn't dulled.

Blooming doesn't happen to all drawings, but it does especially in pieces with very thick coats, one might say burnished into the substrate, something I almost always do. I prefer to work my colored pencil surface until it will barely take any more pigment, so this is a common issue for me, but blooming may be something you never encounter. My pieces usually bloom after they have been allowed to sit three to four days. Another way I can spot a bloom on lighter work is if the surface is matt when I reflect light on it, and it shows finger prints quite clearly, I like my drawing to have a very polished shiny finish, which is the natural quality of the pencil on board, regardless of fixative.

The solution to blooming is deliciously simple. You just wipe the wax off! Ta dah! I like to use a dry clean paper towel, however I work on board and my drawings are... what did I say, yes, burnished into the boards surface so I can be a bit rough, if you're working on paper you may want to use a soft cotton rag. What is important to think about while removing the wax, is to not rub a dark area into a light one, and visa versa and do not rub into any other mediums in your composition.

It will probably surprise you how little pigment will be picked up when you wipe because the wax is on top and the pigment is settled into the substrate. This is especially true if you're drawing with a very waxy pencil like Prismacolor.

I let my pieces bloom about three times before I seal them, once a piece is sealed, say with, workable fixative, it shouldn't bloom again, however if it does, things are not so simple, if a piece blooms underneath a seal there is no way to wipe it off... basically, you're stuck with it. This thankfully has never happened to me, and so I don't have any advice or solutions if it happens to you. This is the main reason I let my pieces bloom at least three times before sealing, because by that point most of the wax that wants to separate has. Often after I've wiped away that third bloom even if I don't seal the piece it won't bloom again.

I try to avoid blooming altogether in a piece that has integrated graphite with the CP, because graphite smears all over the place. sometimes in B&W pieces I like to use graphite for my initial sketch and darkest darks, and in this case I may use workable fixative throughout the drawing process and immediately after finishing the piece, because with the graphite so integrated into the CP wiping away a bloom would smear my piece into oblivion.

Now, wasn't that exciting!

for more resources check out this online book:

The Colored Pencil

By Bet Borgeson