Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Pond - finished

Pond
colored pencil on Rising Museum Board
8 x 8 inches
©Ann Thompson Nemcosky

At least I am calling it finished at this point. I will live with it for a few more days just in case I am inspired to do a little more tweaking. And the title, well, that may change too, if I can think of something better.
You may remember my recent post showing the first two stages of this piece. Above is what it looked like once I had the entire board covered with color.
And here it is again, in it's finished state. Actually the green and yellow leaf in the lower left is more accurate in the unfinished version as far as color and intensity, the evils of getting color correct from scanning! But the changes that I made from stage 3 to the final were that I felt the orange at the top to be too strong, so I lifted some color there and went over it with a more neutral orange-y color. I also added some veins and texture to the red leaf that is in the lower portion and deepened the color of the water in places. And there was the usual cleaning up and sharpening of some edges, while softening others. And lastly, I intensified some of the yellow areas, which really doesn't show up well here. The yellows are somewhat brighter in real life. You will just have to take my word for that.

13 comments:

Jennifer Rose said...

ooh very nice :) love the blues :)

Em said...

That's just gorgeous. I love the complementary colours against each other :)

Revelle Taillon said...

This is absolutely gorgeous! I love the way you work your pencils. I've never used that type of board. Is it very smooth? I should get some and try it because it looks awesome!

padmaja said...

This is ravishing, the contrast in color and shapes bring in a lot of depth, it is challenging to bring this effect with pencils,, well atleast for me!

Alex said...

while maintaining your style and theme, you've managed to reproduce the beauty of nature, the simplest to the most complex. I don't know how you do it, but it gives a lot of hope and joy somehow ^^

Cathy Holtom said...

Lovely work on the shadows and colours, beautiful!

kazumiwannabe said...

The finished work is gorgeous, and I loved being able to watch the process, thak you!

Unknown said...

Gorgeous! You mentioned 'lifting' some color. How did you do this? I've used prismacolor pencils before and it seemed near impossible to do that.

Ann said...

Thanks everyone for your wonderful comments!
Alex - I think I need to frame yours - what lovely things to say :-)
Raena - I just dabbed it with a kneaded eraser. In areas where I want to erase more aggressively, such as to draw in highlights, I use a white plastic eraser. But to gently lift color the kneaded eraser works for me.

Dan Kent said...

It is stunning! Everything from the composition to the colors. I've said it before, and I'll say it again - I'm amazed at what you can do with color pencils!

donna said...

I love this piece!

Peachtreeart said...

Oh wow! This is so realistic and the colors every "eyecatching!"

Anonymous said...

This is so gorgeous. I love how you caught the depth of the water. You can see into the water and the shadows there. Awesome!

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