New painting completed today

Checked off! Another task completed in this very busy and creative week. This morning I finished “Man & Horse,” a piece first mentioned my June 3rd entry called, “Other Projects Under Way.”

It’s 7” x 10” and technically a watercolor, painted on Lana hot press watercolor paper. I say, “technically” because it was done in Derwent Graphitint water-soluble pencils. This was my first real exploration with Graphitints. I liked the pencils for the most part. They are very soft, which can be either good or bad depending on what you’re trying to achieve. Usually, I like my pencils able to hold a better point, but they were very smooth in their application and flowed well with water. The fact that the colors brightened with water was also interesting and pretty, but you had to constantly keep it in mind as you laid down the colors.

The Graphitint colors were an extraordinarily close match to the colors in the original statue and that was my initial inspiration for using them. Their colors are rather subtle and I think you need to think carefully about your subject matter if you’re going to use them without further supplementation with other brighter pencils/paints.

All the same, they make me want to do a statuary series. I have always loved architectural details and I think it would be interesting to explore such a series with the Graphitint pencils. Graphitints also have a lovely range of blues, which were not a huge part of this piece. It will be interesting considering a good subject match for the Graphitint blues. Ocean scenes with water and stones? Perhaps.

The future of this piece is of yet undecided. I think I’m going to submit it to some art competitions. I’m interested to hear what people think about it. One way or another it will definitely need to be photographed more appropriately. *sigh* I suppose that means creating a proper photographic shooting station in my mud room. Oh, I know how to do this…yes I do! But it’s been a while. All the same, I need to start doing slides again and high quality images. Sounds like it’s time to unpack the heavy-duty film camera equipment. Perhaps, it’s also time to consider investing in a nice digital SLR. Maybe. But first sell more. Then buy! Happy day to you all!