Bowl of Cherries...

“Can I Join the Party?”
Colored pencil on Pastelbord

5" x 7"
Beth S. Macre © 2008

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My latest effort with neocolors and pastelbord is this bowl of cherries that I've been wanting to draw for awhile. I used a white pastelbord, then blocked in the colors with the neocolor II. Then I began to build up the values and finally the highlights. When viewed up close you can see the texture that is achieved with the help of the pastelbord. I am really loving the sanded surfaces.

Finished Pear

“Pair for a Pear”

5" x 7"
Colored pencil on Pastel board

Beth S. Macre © 2008

I'm calling this finished. I'm not so happy with it however. I was trying to make it a little like the last pear that I painted, but I realized after I was halfway through that it is much smaller than the first one. So it just doesn't look like a companion piece. I guess it will just have to hang on its own or I will need to create 2 more pieces. One to go with each of these pears. Maybe I will do a different fruit as a companion piece. I believe I'm tired of pears for now. My goal is to learn to use the neocolors with the pastel board, so I will continue to do that. I still have a lot to learn. But I look forward to playing.

Thanks for looking!

A Pair for the Other Pear

Last month I painted a pear with Neocolor IIs. The Neocolors are pretty new and I've been trying out new ways to shorten the process of getting strong color down quickly. Many colored pencil artists are using these new materials and coming up with beautiful results. I like the results I got with the first pear and decided I wanted a companion piece to go with the first pear. So I started this one a couple of days ago. I am using Ampersand pastel board as a support. This one has a grayish color on the pastel board. Keep in mind, this is only the second painting that I've done with the neocolors, so this is definitely an experiment.

The first picture is the underpainting with the neocolors.

A light layer of neocolors are put on then water is brushed on the make it fluid. The color becomes very bright when water is added!

The second has a couple of layers of Prismacolor added.

The third has more layers of colored pencils.

It's not finished yet. I still need to add more layers, highlights, darken shadows, and a few other little tweaks. I will post the final in a day or two.

The Creative Process

I've been struggling with creative block lately. I want to work on my own project, for a change, so bad that I just cannot seem to decide what to draw! Over the last couple of months I've had some commissions to do, so my time to work on 'whatever' has been limited. So now that I have some time to work on something else, I'm frustrated because I'm stumped as to what to do next. So when I read Cindy's blog about "The Creative Muse", it caught my attention. I spend a lot of time looking for new ideas for my students. My advanced students seem to have problems deciding for themselves also. Today I'm looking for ideas for lesson plans and came across some articles about the creative process and where Artists come up with ideas. I came across Nita Lelands blog about "Blockbusters for Artists". I think this is a good list, but I feel such a time crunch that I don't always take the time for these creative activities. I want to jump right in to 'my next great piece'! HA. But it doesn't work that way! I do have her book "The New Creative Artist" and use it at school with my students. I've even made some lessons from some of her projects. So I just need to take my own advice to my students, and play around with some of her ideas. I know what medium I want to use, Neocolors II and Prismacolors on pastelboard are my new favorites, because of their speed and painterly possibilities. Now for deciding what to paint/draw.
So Cindy suggests creating a list to get ideas. I'm still working on the main idea...The subject! I want to chose a subject that says its ME! Cindy often does Still Life, Nicole Caulfied often does Still Life. Paula does Yarn and other cute illustrations. I just seem to be all over the place! (Maybe a result of teaching art for 25 years.) I've got to focus more on 'my subject'! I've done many architectural pieces, but I'm not sure if that is 'my subject' or if I should pursue more still life or what? So what do you think? If you have any suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment.

Tulips ATC

"3 Tulips"

2 1/2" x 3 1/2"

Prismacolors and Neocolor II

Blue Colourfix

Beth S. Macre © 2007

This is my latest ACEO. I used neocolor II underpainting with prismacolors on top. This is included in the online trade of ATCs at ScribbleTalk. ScribbleTalk is an online community of colored pencil artists (and some others who use other drawing media).

Pear with Neocolor II

I finally had some time to play with my new neocolors II today. I really had no idea how to use these, so I just started to play. What I really wanted to do was to make it look painterly. So I started with a simple sketch of a pear. Its such a simple shape, but can be so interesting to me. Then I used scarlet neopastel as the underpainting for the pear(except I used yellow for the light highlighted side of the pear). And a vermilion color for the underpainting of the background. Dark brown went down for the underpainting of the table. After I wet the colors and let them dry, I began to lay down dry color with prismacolors. I used blues on top of the background colors. Light greens on top of the pear. So here is my result, but I have to say, the original looks taller than this image.

Beth S. Macre © 2007