Red Plums

The red plums are my first subject of painting a still life, and can I see my drawing errors, yes, pics posted side by side, so I will refine and do a set up of the fruit and paint them on a 4x6 cotton panel. I will post my progress as I go along. My goodness, I thought I was seeing them better than that...

One problem I keep encountering with my drawings is that the tooth of the paper keeps filling up with graphite and clumping. It is hard to get my darks in without resorting to embossing and I am unsure if I should do that.

I have painting with Cheeko tomorrow and will take one plum to her to see if my idea of using Diox. purple, alizarin crimson and indian yellow for the fruit is on the right track...cannot wait to get started...

Those light lines you will see in most of my drawings are sight lines that I use on a viewfinder to help me get the drawing on the paper better...did it work?

Snowy day March 1

We woke up to snow this morning and it is coming down heavily. Fortunately the snow does not stick to the streets as we have been warming up down in the south. I could not resist taking a picture.

Posting 2 drawings I did yesterday. One is a ceramic figure of a chihuahua. I hope to paint this one with watercolor. The other is a colored pencil drawing of a Hyacinth. It smells so good, I have been watching it grow. Thought it would be a good subject to draw but was overwhelmed with the flowering part, so I did the best I could to suggest the flower.

My photos of my drawings have to be the worst! I have to take them to the photoshop editing area and change the contrast because I have trouble with the lighting, the flash goes off and bleaches out the colors and contrasts or it has a fuzzy out of focus image. I need to work on this aspect, so any suggestions are welcome.