New Year, New Artwork

How time flies! I've been caught up in the holiday spirit, having a wonderful time. But now that the dust has settled and I'm taking stock of what I accomplished in the past two months on the art front, I have to admit that it's not much.

And yikes, I feel a certain art competition deadline bearing down on me! So without dwelling on how much time I've wasted having a great holiday season, I've dropped all my other in-work projects for the moment and started on a new piece.

I'm using the uart 800 sanded art paper for the first time. I'm hoping that the experience of working on the Fisher400 paper will help to prepare me for the uart. It's also the largest colored pencil project I've ever attempted, a 24 x 36 inch sheet.

Some time ago I fell in love with a couple of the photographs that I took of my husband in our garden. We were checking out a new lens on one of our cameras and I took quite a few shots at different settings. Later looking at the pictures I was admiring one of the close up photos which captured a great expression on Marty's face and wishing that I had taken it in a more zoomed out composition. In some of the other poses he had a great relaxed stance that really conveyed the sense of quiet appreciation and enjoyment of a beautiful spring day.

I remember thinking that this face expression on this body pose would have made a great subject for a colored pencil piece. As I mentally tsk, tsk'd looking back and forth between the two photos, the lightbulb finally went on, ...doh! Photoshop....all things are possible with Photoshop!

So now all the preliminary work has been done. The photographs were composited in Photoshop, the contour line drawing traced out and then transferred to the paper. Now the real fun begins!