Happy New Year!

It has been a great year and I am really looking forward to what the new year has in store for me! It is New Year's Eve... my son is home from Houston, Tx and has a number of his friends over celebrating.

And I'm cloistered in my studio drawing......rocks. Yup that's right. I am doing a rock study for a rock tutorial. Thought I would share! I have the rocks completed, now just have to finish the ripples in the water, and some grass and leaves.

Polk City Barn II - Commission

I believe I've got it finished. The textures are rich in this cluster of farm buildings which make this an interesting drawing. The overall tones are darker than many of my previous drawings. This is something that I am working on to build richer, darker tones....

I'm cutting this close. I am trying my hardest to get this done before Christmas. Here's an update!

I continue to work on the buildings. The brick building has been challenging as I create brick textures while not attempting to draw each brick meticulously. I used a 4H chisel point clutch pencil to give an overall tone to the buidling and then using a softer lead (2B) I create areas of brick details.

The tree is starting to emerge on the paper. I want the tree to feel like it is engulfing the building as the branches stretch themselves over the grainery shed.

I have continued to work on the tree as it branches out behind and over the front of the building. This is the most interesting part as the shadows dance over the building that is tucked inside the branches. I am using a 4B and 2B .5 mech pencils to get these rich darks. The highlights are lifted out using the blu-tack.

The detail of the tree foliage is built up with multiple layers of graphite. I use a scribble pencil stroke to create the leaves. Using a battery eraser, I restore the lighter branches and then darken the edges "underneath them".

I will continue to 'built' and 'erase' the leaf bundles to create depth, texture and values of the leaf bundles. The branch is drawn around (negative drawing) leaving it white. I will come back to it later to create more form.

I have created the outline of the buildings and have shaded in the sky tone. This 'toning' of the sky will allow a broader range of values to be captured in this drawing.

This is a return to a previous commissioned subject matter I did for a good friend of mine. She was thrilled with the rendering I was able to produce. The first commission was a challenge since I had to use 5 different photos and piece together the image. You can see the first drawing at: http://www.dianewrightfineart.com/commission.htm - called Polk City Barn.

Since then, she discovered another photo of the barn with additional outbuildings. This one is no less challenging as the photo had 2 vehicles and 2 kids in the foreground.

With the help of Photoshop and a piece of my previous drawing, I was able to piece this composition together. Here is the original photo and the Photoshop enhanced image that I will be using for this drawing: