Category Archives: Colored Pencil

OKC CSPA in May

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okccpsa

OKC CPSA Banner

On the last Tuesday of every month I attend the Oklahoma City Colored Pencil Society of America meeting.  We meet at the Hobby Lobby in Mid West City.  You can find more about the meeting place and times at the OKC CSPA website. 

Last week we had on the agenda a demonstration by J.R. Daniels on color pencil technique, and a presentation by club president David McBride on how to resize your art work for online submission.

J.R. set up his pencils and began drawing a beautiful dragon’s head.  He showed us a few tips and tricks on color selection and mixing, layering and blending.  He spent most of the meeting working on this even through David’s presentation.  The presentation on preparing your work digitally for online submission had some pretty good tips.  David geared the show toward the technologically challenged, so it was a little on the thin side for me.  But he did demonstrate some things in MS Paint that I had not previously known you could do.  When I began messing with paint programs I found Paint Shop Pro and never looked back.  So when David got the the PSP portion of the program, I was really keen to see what he knew that I didn’t.  ;)  Mr. McBride demonstrated with his own artwork how to resize it in a manner that would preserve the sharpness of the image.  He went on to demonstrate how to create new works entirely digitally.  David put on a sharp and interesting presentation and a good time was had that night.  I don’t have any pics of J.R.’s dragon, but David took quite a few.  He will post them the to OKCCPSA website if he ever gets a break from school, family and his day job.  Good luck with that, David.  I know it’s been a constant struggle for me.

I am posting tonight from a borrowed laptop as I am 500 miles from home on a business trip.  I wasn’t cool enough to scan in any pics or bring any thing with me colored pencil wise that was ready to be exposed to the world, so I thought I’d leave you with a drawing I did from a lesson at drawsketch.about.com.

candleflame

Internet Challenges

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bigapplecpEven as recently as twenty years ago, one would have to travel or move to a large city to find art groups to join.  Imagine, and many of us can remember, when just getting a reference photo was kind of a big deal.  You either took the photo yourself and then had to develop the film, process the photos, etc.  Or you went to the 1library or 2bookstore and spent forever going through the pages looking for just the right image.  Now, there are literally millions of free reference photos, and even more that are copyrighted, available for the artist student to download, practice, and challenge himself.  For instance, this apple was one of the challenges for April in the colored pencil section of Wet Canvas.  I enjoy looking for challenges all over the net.  Some of my favorites are, of course, Wet Canvas, Draw Space, Illustration Friday, and I think there are some on Scribble Talk, but I’m still new there and just feeling my way around.  If you know of any others, please feel free to add them in the comments or, better yet, e-mail me.  I’ll check it out and share it with the rest of the class.  I intend on doing at least one challenge like that every week and posting it here.  I intend on that happening on Thursdays.  We shall see.

1 For those of you under the age of 30, a library is like a bookstore except they expect you to return the borrowed books after you read them.

2 For those of you under 20, a bookstore is like the net with “pages” being made of flattened wood pulp instead of on a monitor, except that you have to buy the pages in bulk.

edm104scissorsEDM 104, draw some scissors was more of a challenge than I expected.  Foreshortening and still keeping the blades sharp, changing colors and textures using only .5mm graphite, and my beautiful young bride standing over my shoulder waiting for me to return her scissors to the kitchen all can be quite disconcerting.  I am pleased with the overall result, and yes my lover got her scissors back.  For the record, she had every reason to suspect that I wouldn’t return them.  I still have the bathroom scale, a spoon, and Girl1’s Buddy Holly sunglasses laying about in my studio space.