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Organic Root Beer Bottle, neocolor II crayons in watercolor sketchbook, 2008

Daisies, black pitt pens in sketchbook, 2008

This weekend I ended up being very productive, but not in terms of art. It seems like I did all kinds of things except doing artwork. Today I cooked an unbelievable quantity of food (scones, macaroni and cheese and a big batch of oatmeal), went shopping and cleaned my bathroom. I put drawing off until the very end and now I am do tired I don’t think I can do much more. For some reason my right arm has been aching for the past two days. Yesterday I was feeling sort of fearful to do any drawing for fear of making it worse but today I did a lot of manual labor and my arm doesn’t feel worse for the wear. I think that I have just been trying to avoid things that have been bothering me lately, sort of like my TMS days.

Apple Still Life, Neocolor II crayons in 10×7 watercolor sketchbook, 2008

These are my offerings for EDM 24: draw a piece of fruit, and 91: draw an apple. I really tried to capture the shadows and reflected light in these sketches. I’ve begun to really like my kraft paper sketchbook and I’m surprised I have never gotten one before. I think working on tinted paper definitely adds a new dimension to drawing. In the above piece, I used my Neocolor II watersoluble crayons. About a year ago I bought a tin of 15 but I only used it once or twice. I really haven’t gotten the hang of it yet honestly. I felt like I spent most of my time scrubbing out the crayon marks with my brush and the wax congealed into little puddles that I wasn’t happy with. This medium will definitely take more practice for me to get really comfortable with.

Apple sketch, Prismacolor colored pencil on kraft paper, 2008

Tangerine sketch, Prismacolor colored pencil on kraft paper, 2008

I bought a little tin of Neocolor II’s a few months ago, back when I was still in school. I had been so busy that I didn’t really get a chance to properly try them out. Last week I grabbed these bananas and painted them using my new toy. I really like how they handle and I think it actually looks very similar to watercolor. I colored them with first and then went over it with a wet brush to blend the colors. I added the dots in by taking pigment directly from the crayon with a wet brush. I think that I will use these in the future when I want the look of watercolor but with less hassle. Hopefully next time I will paint something a little more interesting than this.

After getting all mopey this afternoon, I decided that I’d better do something, even if it was just a sketch one of the everyday matters challenges. So I decided to draw the magnolia tree in the front yard for edm challenge #59: signs of spring. When the flowers on this tree start to come out, I get cheered up because I know it is going to start getting really warm. (One year, the tree started budding in November because it was unseasonably warm.) I used my new Caran d’Ache Neocolor’s, which are really like hi-tech crayons. I wanted to see what they were like with water so I smeared some on with my fingertip. It was kind of fun and I can’t wait to do some more stuff with them. I dug through my childhood sketchbook and I found this drawing I did of the same tree back in 1998 (I was fifteen!). Looking through my old sketchbook was enlightening and I could see a definite upward progression in my skill level during the two years that I kept it. It was encouraging to see that I was improving even then.