I've never been much of a still life artist, nor landscape. I guess that is because I always want some kind of human element in my pictures. When I tried to do some landscapes, I threw in a person, even when one didn't exist in what I was viewing. Also, as far as landscapes go, I don't think any artist can capture the beauty of nature, for it is not just a visual experience but one that needs all the senses to appreciate it.
Ah, the fruit pictures! This was just a practice in using colored pencils, a media I love, but one I don't have the patience for . . . although I've made a lot of bookmarks using water color pencils (what fun, and they make great personal gifts!) These fruit pictures are not my original idea, just recreating pics from a colored pencil art technique book, to learn the media.
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| This is the first picture I ever drew with quality soft pastels and paper (my favorite pastels are Rembrandt, favorite paper is Canson Mi Teintes; I've tried more expensive brands of both, but these work best for me), and I fell in love with the media then and there: the rich colors they could produce on the right kind of paper. I drew this out of my imagination, just experimenting with the colors. More pastels below, same media. |
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One of my few attempts at drawing flowers. What was most interesting was drawing the one on the left (I think it a begonia?). I drew it over a period of a few days, so every time I went back to it, the plant I was using as a "model" had changed, meaning new flowers had bloomed and old ones had dropped their petals (an impatient model, for sure!). So it was interesting to observe the plant's change over that time period. The flowers on the left are ones I picked from my garden, when I used to grow flowers every year. I had to draw quickly, since they were cut and soon to die and wilt.
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| First class art assignment using pastels. The assignment (from what I can recall) was to draw something mechanical (in any drawing media). I took the drawing class during the summer, so had to do homework while I was vacationing up north at a lake resort. Couldn't think of what to draw, since mechanical objects bore me. My husband had an old boat motor prop, so I set it on the table in the cabin, and started to draw it. Then, I started to thinking: "how would fish react, if a prop fell off of a boat motor into the water? Would they be curious about this strange object, and swim toward it, or become scared and swim away?" I guess that depends on what fish. :} |
| Well, like I said, whenever I try to draw nature, I want to throw a human being in the scene, to experience it. This is a picture including one of my backside, standing out on the deck of cabin, overlooking West Crooked Lake in northern Minnesota. I had just planned on drawing the lake and scenery, but I got bored with that, since I'm not a landscape artist. So, I put me in the picture as a way to show, to me, how much I love looking over the lake, smelling the air, listening to the loons, etc. By the way, that dark shadow on the right . . . that's my thumb covering part of the camera lens, while taking a slide of the painting. I never was very good at taking pics of my artwork! |
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