Sunday, December 30, 2007

Getting messy


I´ve decided to go out of my comfort zone even more these last few drawings of my December challenge (to draw from imagination every day). I am going to try a few landscapes in a very limited palette, plus I´ll be working with Neocolor II crayons dipped in water to try to avoid my usual controlled details.

I chose five light colours today, plus white, which made it kind of hard to achieve any real contrasts, but since the colours are very different from each other I thought I´d be able to get a feeling of light and shadow anyway. Sadly, the blue turned into green everywhere, since I didn´t manage to keep it clean from the yellow and yellow ochre, but I liked the exercise anyway.

I particularly like that this is more like painting than drawing. A Neocolor II crayon dipped in water gets very blunt after a while, so you have to lay down the colours in patches rather than lines, and you feel like you´re painting with a huge brush rather than drawing with a crayon. I also like the feeling of these crayons when wet, it´s like smearing melted butter. :)

15 x 20,5 cm, light grey Pitt brush pen and Neocolor II crayons on drawing paper.

7 comments:

Linda T said...

Wow, what a neat effect! It's beautiful.

Donn said...

Very interesting effect indeed. I have a set of 20 of these but never tried them wet before applying to the paper. I either lay the crayon color in first, then add water, or just take the color off the crayon with a brush. I started a painting with them but haven't finished it yet.

Lindsay said...

I'm just loving your whole December series. So much fun to see how your art is evolving. This one is beautiful.

Anonymous said...

I like the idea of using the crayons wet. I have been thinking of getting some Neocolors myself. Seeing this makes me want to go right now.

Ann said...

Aren't Neocolors so much fun? Lovely piece, I like the light and shadows.

caseytoussaint said...

This really is beautiful - it just shimmers with light. I love the way you've been creating your own little summer space in the dark of winter.

quirkyartist said...

This one looks like you're thinking of spring.