Checking in

A short post today just to check in and let you all know that I haven't forgotten my blog here. We were away last week and then Kiddo and I came down with a flu bug. We are home now and recovering. I did manage one quick sketch while away but you know, there's no place like home really.

I also want to thank everyone for your so very kind and encouraging comments left on my last post. Your generous words mean a lot to me. I'll be back at the drawing board with something new soon.

Ocean Blue

Ocean Blue

colored pencil on Rising Museum Board

7.5 x 9.5 inches

©Ann Thompson Nemcosky

Here it is, all finished. I have been looking at it for a couple of days now and am going to leave this one as it is. I am happy with the final result and I would like to do a few more ocean drawings. Every time we are at the beach I use up a ridiculous number of pixels taking pictures of the water and waves. I get captivated with the way the surf moves, expanding and contracting, out and in, and the patterns that are formed as each wave washes the shore. And the way the light at various times of day plays off the water, it's always something different to see. The last time we were at our favorite Edisto Beach the water was an amazing blue, like I had never noticed before. That is what I hoped to capture with my photos, and translate into this drawing. That incredible blue.

And just to show you, this was one of the stages as the drawing was nearing completion. I used ten different blue pencils, along with two purples, a pink, and a warm and a cool gray. As I was developing the darkest areas in the foreground I discovered that even my indigo blue wasn't giving me the depth in those darks that I wanted. So out came one of my favorite pencils, caput mortuum violet. You can see where I began adding it in the lower right portion of the image above. It did the trick too, by deepening and warming those dark areas just enough.

 And here it is again in its final state, same as the image at the top. Thanks for following along as I worked on this one. All of your kind and encouraging comments are so appreciated and help keep me going! Now, what should I draw next?

Getting there

Here is my current colored pencil piece, through the next couple of stages. Above you can see where I started getting into that area of the water where the foamy bits begin. The contrast in this area is more stark and pattern like but I had to keep in mind that even though those shapes of foam are very light, they are not the brightest parts of the composition.

Now here is where the tricky part of the drawing begins to emerge. At this point I was really beginning to question the wisdom of my choice of subject matter and my sanity in trying to draw all of this foamy water splashing on the shore. There is little defining shape and the contrast of light to dark areas is much more subtle. I am going to continue on with the darker passages in the foreground (that are just barely blocked in at this point), and then go back to make adjustments in the foamy surf. I will need the reference of those darkest passages where the water washes over the shore in order to see how the values in the rest of the piece should relate to those darkest darks. It's a lot of going back and forth with color and value, but it's slowly getting there!