Pencil sharpeners and drawings, old and new.

For years I have bought and used pencil sharpeners I either 

chose myself or they had been recommended. 

All of those shown above worked perfectly for graphite 

and usually for my colored pencils.

They worked with battery, electricity, or were operated by hand.

However, I was always looking for the perfect sharpener 

for colored pencils. 

 Recently Jeanne Benson gave me a new hand manipulated 

sharpener, that came from England.

 The pencils at the bottom were sharpened with my old sharpeners

and those above with the new hand cranked sharpener from the UK.

 Over the years in planning my embroideries I would often 

draw the image first with colored pencil.

 The drawings were never complete as they were just 

a design for a future embroidery. 

Since I started using my new sharpener 

I looked back at the old drawings and reworked several.

 It is a pleasure to use these very sharp colored pencils 

on the textured papers, filling in the white that shows through.

 This lily was drawn fairly quickly in Gladstone, Australia, and 

the orchids, below, in Melbourne when on a teaching tour in 2001.

I have enjoyed adding contrast, fine lines, and definition 

to these old drawings. 

Although I am using up my pencils a little faster than before, 

it has been a pleasure to spend this past month 

with very sharp colored pencils.

Colored Pencil and Peppers

The past two weeks have been spent shifting my thinking

 from a PC  laptop to a huge new computer monitor, an iMac.

I am struggling with many issues but think I have been able to add to my blog.

 Several weeks ago I found a lot of these wonderful peppers

 at the Farmers Market and bought many more of them for a dining table centerpiece.

 Taking some of them into the studio I drew this sketch on white paper.

This pen and ink was in a previous blog.

 I no longer have PhotoShop Elements so could not lighten the right side of this photo. 

Before the peppers dried I worked on this colored pencil painting 

using the above reference photo and the actual peppers to capture the bright colors.

Again, without PSE I could not lighten the white background 

of this photo taken by my iPad. 

Perhaps there is someplace on this Mac to accomplish 

what I need but otherwise I may be reinvesting in PhotoShop.

 Saturday I enjoyed a tour through the house and studio by the 

Renwick Alliance. So most of last week was not spent 

learning the iMac but getting ready for the tour. 

Now I will again work at learning by shifting my thinking 

and back to the studio for some much needed creative work.

Barbed Wire now traveling to Scottsdale, AZ

Sometime ago I took this photograph at a friend's farm near Waterford, Virginia.

After viewing the barbed wire fences around the fields 

I sketched this one that seemed to be barely standing among the weeds.

Then I embroidered that sketch in dark gray thread. 

Taken as an image by itself without the weeds and

rusting equipment in the background, 

there is sort of a dignity to the resultant fence.

The completed triptych, BARBED WIRE is 48 by 19 inches wide.

It will soon be at The Wee Gallery of Fine Art 

in the Scottsdale Biennale 2013, 

October 1 to 31.

Ipad Art App Procreate, studies

 In my last blog, I worked with Procreate App, 

but just for simple B & W drawing.

Now I am trying to figure out the many tools available on this App.

From a detail of a bouquet I tried several brushes 

along with the changing and blending colors.

 There are so many sub categories for each tool. Under 'brushes'

the listing includes sketching, inking, painting, airbrushing, textures, and abstract

with more sub categories under each listing as well as size and opacity.

 These are the marks made in the abstract tool which can be 

changed with Dynamics, ie..... speed, 

pressure, jitter, and spacing, besides color, size and opacity.

 Textures as well have the many changeable variations as each brush.

Sub categories under textures are Victorian, wood, cubes, 

diagonal stripes, half tones, grunge, grid, and decimals.

I have to admit that the Victorian texture is my favorite 

and I used it several times.

 Moving a detail of a photo onto a canvas I worked at 

changing much of the image with the various tools.

Under the Sketching tool the sub categories are 

technical pencil, HB pencil, 6B pencil, shading, graphite, 

soft pastel, chalk, and artist crayon. 

 There are so many directions you can go with so many tools

that I feel I have just scratched the surface of this App.

I did use the Victorian texture extensively in this painting, 

changing size, opacity , and color. 

For this teapot of flowers I used the wood texture for the table.

I have decided Procreate needs much more study, 

trial and errors, for me to really be able to make use of

so many tools and their combinations. 

Procreate App and drawing zinnias

 From Dominie's garden are a couple of my favorite flowers, zinnias.

I haven't had much time to do any more than quickly draw them. 

Here, below is a page from my sketchbook using pencil, pen and ink.

After drawing several zinnias in black and white on paper I 

decided to try some of the same views on the iPad. 

Using the Procreate App with its brush tool, I drew these 

images much more quickly than on the paper. 

It was interesting to see these two reproductions and how 

much more contrast the drawings on the iPad appear to

 have on the computer monitor.

I do plan to embroider at least one of these zinnias in

colorful thread.