Bell Pepper Update

Perfection is overrated. After writing that last post, I went a couple of days without looking at my bell pepper drawing, but still kind of stewing about it. But then, your encouraging, constructive comments prodded me to get it back out, fix it as best I could, and move on. I decided to forgo the inside cross-section I had planned, spent a few minutes on those problem areas, and gave this guy his jaunty little stem hat.

Linda, thanks for suggesting the use of an exacto knife; it's great for removing the waxy layers! I could even feather the area I was working on with the tip of the blade. Live and learn.

Afterward, I cleaned up the paper around the image digitally, as I always do. I eventually go back and clean up the original, but I like my scans to have the same white background. I know it alters reality a bit (no drawing paper is pure white) but the images pop nicely on a white ground. There are probably a number of better ways to do this, but here's my routine: I go into Photoshop and select an eraser with a soft (feathered) round brush. I run it along the edge of the image, being very careful to erase just shy of the image itself. This takes some experimenting with brush sizes, etc; if  too big of a brush is used, or it's too close to the image, the feathering will lighten the edge of the pencil work. Once the area next to the image is clean, it's easy to use the lasso tool and clear out the rest of the background. (I'm not super meticulous when I draw; my paper is always full of pencil dust, smears, etc.)

Oh, and some of you asked about my swatch cards that I mentioned. When I made them, I had no idea how indispensable they'd be. I never do a colored pencil drawing without using them. Click here to read the post I wrote ages ago when I created them.

This little episode has reminded me why I love to draw things from nature—they're not perfect. No one notices if that bump on that squash isn't exactly right. Let's hear it for imperfection!

Bell peppers with spumoni gelato

No, that's not a photo-realistic colored pencil drawing. It's a photo of the spumoni gelato that I just served myself as consolation for messing up a drawing that I've been working on yesterday and today. I suppose it's important to share failures as well as successes, so here's my sordid little tale:

It all started out well enough. Not finding inspiration around the house, I headed over to my neighborhood Safeway to peruse the produce aisle. It never disappoints. Here are my purchases/models-to-be:

The beautiful bright orange bell pepper (not as red as it looks in these photos) was calling my name, so I set it up on my desk,

and chose my pencils (using my indispensable swatch cards).

My plan was to draw the outside and then, next to it, a cross-section showing the inside. I even remembered to take some work-in-progress scans:

I was really happy with how the top and left side of the pepper were shaping up. Instead of going for the blended, burnished look, I was trying to keep that softer colored-pencil texture while conveying a smooth shiny surface. (Does that make sense?) Working on the shaded right side, I was trying to layer the colors without reaching that saturation point where the paper won't take any more of the wax-based Prismacolor pencils. Now, this scan is being kind, but if you click and look closely, you'll see that, all of a sudden, the darker colors shading the right side were coming out all blotchy and overworked looking. (Trust me, the original is far worse than this scan.). I tried burnishing, smoothing, and in desperation, used my blender pen which caught a stray crumb of pencil from somewhere and made a dark streak on the upper right of the pepper. Soooo, I tried to hide that "scar"...the whole thing was like trying to fix your bangs when you cut them crookedly. Ugh.

Now, maybe I could fix it digitally, but do I really want to spend any more time on a drawing that will never be the way I want it to be? No. I'll chalk it up to a lesson learned...and enjoy my ice cream while I ponder doing some "looser" drawings instead of these time-consuming ones. Food for thought...literally!

What do you do when a piece goes awry? Do you live with it? Toss it? Eat gelato?