Figure in the Grass

I take my pencils and a sketchbook when I sit the Northwind Arts Center galleries once a month. Occasionally the exhibit inspires me directly, at other times work on display flavors my latest drawings as I draw at their (rather fabulous) desk. On Friday I started with the idea of working larger with my Grasses series. However I will probably need to take that into a new media: I can’t scale up the way I use pencils… and still have fun! Then my theme of wrapping and bandages entered my sketch. We’ll see if this works into a finished image at some point; I think it will appear again.

In fact I am doing some digital work with this scan, adjusting the the figure visibility a bit, while still keeping it lost in the grass…

Figure in the Grass, with digital mods

Your Choice!

As to what?  and where?  and who?   this drawing is about, I leave the guessing to you

Grasses V, mixed media on art board

This continuation of my texture meditations started with embossing & black conte crayon, then graphite pencil. It was very dull, but I did not want high contrast black & white, so I added a little color.

I used colored pencil (including metallics), pan pastel, and for the extra touch you cannot really see in this image a three colored silk threads…

This tangled twig drawing on paper evokes a nest of snakes … and it is getting more interesting. At first it was soft, delicate and irritatingly bland…

Tangled Twigs VI, maybe finished

I worked on it but my efforts to add & improve were failing, so I set it aside. Returning to it now, I am bolder with changes. The large ghost leaf/nest is a new major addition, and it has more contrast, and more but less vivid color.

Curly Twig Tangle VI, early draft

I don’t love it, and wish I had chosen different colors, but it does work better. The lower image is a scan of an early draft before the recent work.

Unfortunately the muted purple Prismacolor pencil I used is one that bleeds vivid magenta with spray fixative! It took a lot of work to mute that ghastly effect. I need to test my colors for this problem: it seems several purple shades do this, and there may be a few other colors that separate and bleed!