“Best Friends” completed

Today has been a busy day! First stop this morning was to deliver my pieces to Emerald Downs in Auburn. On the way home, I stopped by Daniel Smith's Arts in Seattle (the BIG store!!) and picked out a new mat cutting system so that I will never again go through the hell that I did on Monday while trying to cut two simple mats! *deep breath* After that it was home to finish (among other things) my newest piece, “Best Friends.”

“Best Friends” 9”x 12” Derwent Drawing Pencils

I like this piece. It has the nice companionable feel I was hoping for. I even came to respect the Derwent Drawing pencils by the time I was done. But then…the ultimate question (drum roll please)…would I use these pencils again for a piece like this? And the answer...Probably not. Everything I did with them I could have more easily and comfortably done with Prismacolors. But would I take them with me to sketch in the field? For that, probably yes. They are pretty nice pencils, after all. They make me itch to try them out on colored paper, using the paper as the mid-tone and the pencils to provide the high and low lights. I can definitely see that they might be fun for that. Perhaps I’ll set that up as their next test. But that’s for later. For now I have several other pieces in mind which will be either straight colored pencil, water-soluble pencil, watercolor, or more likely some kind of combination.

So here's to it. Onwards and upwards!