Sunday, November 30, 2008

Two Apples



This apple was one of a bunch in a basket along with some fall leaves that was on the front of a Thanksgiving card our insurance agent sent. I wonder would my insurance premiums go down if he sent fewer greeting cards??? Hummm....

Anyway, I wanted to try to draw it using colored pencils. I have seen some fabulous work with CPs that looked like photographs. Maybe I could come close.

The apple on the left was done using Crayola brand colored pencils. Don't wrinkle your nose, Crayola makes some great products. I happen to have own two sets of the 50-pack colored pencils. Love 'em.

Problem with Crayola is they don't lay down a bunch of color so I really had to scrub to get any color saturation on the paper. Plus they are kinda waxy so I wasn't able to layer the colors. With 50 colors to choose from I really didn't need to layer much.

Tried the apple again with a set of 12 Prismacolor pencils. Color saturation is very nice but they were just as waxy as the Crayolas. The color is SO intense that subtlety was not an option. I let the lights get away from me before I knew it.

I like the weird colors of the shadow on this one, but I think the shadow is too large overall. Sigh. Win some; lose some.

I don't know what I'm looking for out of colored pencils, but I think I should be able to lay down more than two layers of color. Maybe I'm using the wrong kind of paper. Maybe I just don't know how to properly handle colored pencils. Sigh. I hate it when I don't know what I'm doing and don't know where to find the answer.

I think I actually like the Crayola apple better. Yeah, wrinkle yer nose.

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EDM Challenge #91 - Draw an apple

3 comments:

Capt Elaine Magliacane said...

If my nose is wrinkled it's because I'm wondering if the Crayola pencils smell like the crayons? I too like the Crayola apple the best, it has a dreamy, transparent quality to it, not that different from watercolor... which is my first love. Fabulous work on both of them... looks like you know what you're doing from here.

Speck said...

Thanks Capt. Elaine. As far as smell goes, the Crayolas don't smell like every other wooden pencil in the world, there's a kind of a plasticky smell to them. But they don't smell like a box of regular ol' Crayola crayons.

Monette Satterfield said...

I like both apples for different reasons :)

I'm feeling your pain about colored pencils. I've used them for years and still not come to terms with them.

I generally use prismacolors mostly because it's what I started with (way back when they were nearly the only ones available) and don't feel like rebuilding my collection.