More new crayons

Last year at this time, I wrote a post about the childhood thrill that a new box of crayons would bring. (I'd just received my set of 132 Prismacolor pencils for Christmas!) Well, Prismacolor recently added 18 new colors, so guess what I got from my husband this year? Since I also got an annoying cold for Christmas—I'll take a lump of coal next year, Santa—today was the first day that I felt like playing. I just had to start by making swatches—the ones I made last year have been invaluable—but since these won't fit into my original pages, there may be another swatchapalooza happening really soon.

It's hard to believe that 132 colors didn't already cover all the bases, but a few of these are really nice additions, even if they don't have great names. The "Sap Green Light" is beautiful—when you do a lot of botanical drawings, lots of really good, natural greens are important. And the "Dioxazine Purple Hue" nicely fills a gap in the deep violet range. There are three "neon" colors, which are new for me. I didn't think I'd care for them, but as I did the swatches, I was kind of intrigued:  the color really jumps off  the paper, and they'll be fun to experiment with; I'm curious to see how they layer and get along with the other colors.

So, tomorrow, at long last, the drawing resumes. It's been a busy month, but I've just packed away the last of my Christmas decorations. Happily, my New Year's weekend consists solely of fresh Dungeness crab...and fresh new pencils.

Swatching, scanning and shooting

Well, so far this week, the Illustration Friday topic of "surrender" has me about ready to do just that.  So, I've decided to show you the swatches that I made for my new set of Prismacolors.

I had looked for a pre-made blank chart online, but the one offered on the Prismacolor website has the color name printed right on the little pencil shape that you're supposed to color in.  Well, that just irritated me, so I laser-printed out a simple grid on some Strathmore Bristol, and made my own chart.  The hard part was deciding which color would go where.

Before making the final chart, I made some quickie swatches, cut them all out and played with the arrangement before taping them in place. I probably spent more time on that than most normal people would, but as I've mentioned before, I find that kind of thing to be highly entertaining.  In fact, I loved it when Paula Pertile referred to her recent swatch-making marathon as a swatching bender.  Such a perfect description, as there really is something rather decadent about allowing oneself the luxury of playing like this.  As I colored each little gradient rectangle, I tried to make the blends seamless.  (You can definitely tell that I started with the greys, since I got better as I went!)

My reason for making these charts, other than to have the color reference, is to use them as a sort of baseline so that I can improve my scanning and digital photography skills.  I love being able to make digital captures of my very non-digital art, but the endless number of options and variables involved in scanning/shooting, viewing and printing an image makes my head spin.  I've been scanning most things, but my son gave me a very cool copy stand to use when photographing my work, and I'm just starting to play with it.  I'd love to hear from other colored pencil artists...do you prefer to scan or shoot?  What equipment/settings do you use?   I'm going to be scanning and shooting these charts like crazy, and comparing the results...should be fun!!

This just in...the pencil geekfest continues!  The folks over at pencils.com saw my drawings on Pencil Revolution last week, and were kind enough to feature me today as this week's Monday Pencil Artist.  So nice!  Both of these sites seem eager to feature pencil artists, so feel free to contact them if you're interested.  The blog editor at pencils.com even asked if I would be interested in doing a product review of their colored pencils.  I told him that I'd be very happy to - artists always like trying new toys!  So, if that comes to pass, I'll let you know what I think of them.  Hmmm...do I see more swatches in my future?