It has been a long time since I've posted here on my blog. Various circumstances including Covid caught me off guard and hence I've been slow to get back on track. But I've decided to start posting again. Many of my viewers have expressed that they missed my progressions on my art work so I'm going to begin with my latest, Coloured Pencil on Bristol Vellum 11 x 14 entitled "Let There be Lights!"
The reference I used came from one of the free sites for artists but unfortunately I was unable to find it again as I would like to give credit to the photographer. I will keep trying though.
So here's where I'm at now. I started using a bronze coloured pan pastel to block in the background just to give me a base to work from and so I was not looking at the white of the paper. Then I began my color map of the bulb in the foreground. Very delicate work because when you transfer your drawing it can often become very confusing about what marks go where, so slow and sure I made some progress. The color in the reference photo of the dark bulb in the foreground is a difficult colour to match, not that that's necessary, so I worked with a series of reds and pinks, most notably Neon Pink as a base. Gradual layering was most important here. For the darkest areas I used Dark Sepia rather than black (which I rarely use in any of my pieces).
Once the Sepia was applied in numerous light layers so as not to break down the tooth, I added the neon pink over top to give it that "pinky fuschia glow" I will of course, touch this all up and sharpen up areas in the end.
I then began working on the other bulbs and background as I was going a little cross-eyed working on the minute details of that first bulb. Using a series of oranges, reds, yellows and some grays, I mapped in some of these areas. It's all about layering lightly and gradually developing not only the right colour but creating the soft edges and bokeh type areas in the lights.
Hope you like it so far!