Tag 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

Notes from the Man Cave

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Adapt - a self portrait

Adapt - a self portrait

On Tuesdays, I like to post the weekly challenges I am involved with, or any new challenges I might find.  The Illustration Friday challenge this week is “Adapt.”  Of course with my background in biology, I immediately thought of evolution.  After brainstorming a bit I came down to cro-magnon in a business suit, or a chameleon in the unemployment line.  I also thought of my friend Nick Dupree and the ADAPT organization.  I decided there was enough depression about the economy and ran with the cave man.  I borrowed a business suit from the Hanna Barbara line and viola!  Adapt – A self Portrait.

weekly drawing challenge at wet canvas

weekly drawing challenge at wet canvas. China marker on Canson recycled paper 9" x 12".

I went to the Oklahoma City chapter of the Colored Pencil Society of America meeting last week.  One of the guys there was giving a demo of blending and color choices.  He drew a beautiful dragon head from imagination.  I’ll talk more about that tomorrow, but I have always loved doing dinosaurs and dragons.  However, my dragon heads always end up looking like beaked muppets.  I was trying to decide what I needed to fix that.  Just today on the ride home from work, I decided that I needed to draw more animals.  I watched the special feature footage of how they did the dragons on Reign of Fire.  Turns out they based much of their dragonry on cats, especially their movement.  That’s what I was thinking about when I came across this week’s drawing challenge over at Wet Canvas.    That’s kind of like the universe saying, “Hey Blade, draw THIS!”

Colored Pencil Challenge

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One of the May colored pencil challenges from Wet Canvas

One of the May colored pencil challenges from Wet Canvas

While I was perusing the online challenges this evening, I came across this one at Wet Canvas.  It is one of the photos for the May colored pencil challenge.  I love a close cropped still life.  I’m really tempted to just do this in ink.  I Think that I am going to take some time with this one and post my *WIPs as I go along.  Maybe I’ll even get it done by the end of the month deadline.

*Wip – Work In Progress

EDM 111: Draw something fresh

MMMM, Garlic.  We had spaghetti for dinner tonight.  We have all of these cloves of wonderful, fresh garlic laying around and I didn’t use any of it in the sauce.  I guess we’re saving it for when the vampires come around.  But I do love the smell of fresh garlic while it sizzles in the pan!