Field Notes from Alex's Wonderland: Too Many Photos

I took too many photos on my various outings last week, and too many photos of the colored pencil drawing I did, and there's simply too much for one post. So I'm saving some for next Monday, and hoping that I don't do anything much between now and then that might result in even more pics.

For this post, I'll start with a lovely stroll the Hounds and I took round the Park at the Lakes in West Richland. There were quite a few birds in evidence--here are my favorites:

Red-winged Blackbird

Yellow-headed Blackbird

American Coots

California Quail

And here are the Hounds enjoying their walk:

On to the art: last time, I was working on a very complex colored pencil portrait of Crowley (from Good Omens) draped over his throne chair (he's kind of a dramatic fellow) as he pleads with God over that whole Armageddon thing. The hardest part to render was that fancy chair, and here I present a step-by-step demonstration of the process, just because I can.

Here is the photo ref, with the demonstration section circled:

Close-up. It was approximately one by one-and-a-half inches:

I added a light yellow, avoiding the highlights. These are Faber-Castell oil-based colored pencils.

The next darkest color was put in using yellow ochre.

Raw Umber and Nougat were used for the midtone values. My drawing turned out to be a little inaccurate in a few small places, so I had to make a couple of judgment calls on the values there (also called "making stuff up".)

The darkest areas were colored in with Walnut Brown. Many areas have two or three overlapping colors, some have four.

When small amounts of solvent are added (baby oil) using a very small brush (size 5/0), those overlapping colors blend, and the pigment can be moved around as needed. This step takes the longest, as I am adding just enough oil to work about 1/16th of an inch at a time, and often need to re-add pencil pigment after it has dried and then re-add solvent to get it right.

After I'm happy with the solvent step, I use an eraser to lift out a few lighter areas, and then burnish the whole section with white colored pencil to both smooth it out and to make it blend with the section done earlier.

The chair took three days (3-4 hours a day) to complete. The rest took another five days. I was able to put together all of the knowledge and experience from the past year of doing colored pencil work into this piece, and finally felt as if I weren't just practicing again, but actually knew what I was doing.

Here is the finished picture:

Okay, maybe there's room for just a bit more. On another outdoor adventure, I took the Hounds to the Master Gardener Demonstration Gardens in Kennewick, where we met up with several members of the Tri-City Wiener Walkers.