Indian Corn

Prismacolor colored pencils on Strathmore Bristol Vellum, 7.5" x 12"

I've been wanting to do an Indian corn drawing for a long time, (is it politically incorrect to call it Indian corn?) but other than this one for my little heart series, I hadn't taken it on. For one thing,  I couldn't get excited about the composition. I didn't want to do the usual tied cluster of three ears, and a single ear just kind of sat there.

I moved the ears around, attracted to the contrast between the neutral, papery husk and the jewel-like kernels, but the husks were all flattened and askew:

Then it dawned on me: You can soak corn husks to soften them for corn husk dolls and tamales, so why not for a drawing? Just a few minutes in a bowl of water and the husks were as pliable as fabric (not to mention sort of a rose color). I coaxed them into the arrangement I thought might be interesting, and laid them to dry.

 As they dried, the husks moved a bit (and lost their rosy color), but they ended up looking much more interesting and natural-looking than when they started:

I played around a bit with this composition that I had in mind: I took photos, cropped, rotated..and finally it looked right—well, at least it looked right to me! It may still need a bit of fine-tuning, but I need a break from it before I can see just what to tweak. Here's a look at the progression of things:

Things went well until I got to this point: How much white could I leave in those from husks? I thought they were interesting left mostly un-rendered for contrast. I ended up scanning the drawing and playing on some b/w copies trying different ways of finishing up.

And, last but not least, here are the pencils that I used on this piece:

The block-printing bug...and a Guinness or two

It all started innocently enough when I was drawn to the vintage graphics on this brayer box at an estate sale. A few weeks and a few purchases later, I'm in the throes of a block printing obsession.

(There are tons of wonderful block-printing tutorial videos and instructions online—I especially like Linda Cote's site—so I won't go into a lot of the "how-to" details of preparing your drawings, etc. Feel free to ask questions in the comment section.)

For the first pass, I used a little block of Speedball's "Speedy Cut" material. (It's either white or blue in the stores.) Yes, it's super easy to carve, but the eraser-like material doesn't hold up all that well to multiple cleanings or larger print runs. Here's the block I used for my first little piece, seen above:

Confidence boosted, I decided to try a regular carving block of linoleum. I chose one of my favorite old drawings to adapt. At first, I was discouraged at how difficult it was to carve. But I realized that I was trying to carve too deeply; once I got the hang of it, it was great fun.

This material gives your cuts more of a traditional woodcut look, but it'll take some more practice for me. However, I may not return to the lino, because I'm in love with Speedball's "Speedy Carve", as you'll see below. (Why Speedball named their two materials so similarly is beyond me...I just call it "the pink stuff" now.)

Feeling pretty brave at this point, I decided to make try a two-color reduction print for my son's girlfriend's birthday, using a photo I'd taken of her beautiful Doberman, Guinness. Yes, I did an overlay on this one, not an original drawing, but it was a photo that I took myself. I decided not to create my own drawing, because I wanted to capture this specific dog, and we all know that we, as pet owners, know every little unique detail of our animals.

The Speedy-Carve is soft enough to cut easily, but retains its edges beautifully through multiple cleanings and printings. I experimented with different  papers, etc. My new fave is Arches 88...those prints turned out beautifully.

On a reduction print, you print the lightest color first, then cut away everything that remains that color to print the next color. Obviously, this creates a limited edition—there's no going back to that first layer! But if you used a little homemade jig like I did (see below), it makes registration a breeze. In fact, getting those two colors to align perfectly was my biggest fear, and they all came out lined up perfectly!

Here's my set-up: a piece of foamcore board with a hole cut the exact size of my block but not quite as thick. An L-shaped corner to register the paper against, 

and I made a "mask" out of heavy paper to quickly lay over the image after inking so that the stray inking marks would be covered up and wouldn't print. I learned that many experience printers prefer rubbing the back of the paper with a wooden spoon rather than a traditional baren. Easy and cheap!

I made about a dozen and got quite a few pretty nice prints out of those, but this was my best one, all framed up to send off!

I'll never give up my pencil drawing—in fact, I'm having a great time on a new piece at the moment—but there is definitely a lot more block printing in my future!

Golden Delicious

My neighbor's Golden Delicious apple tree is loaded with fruit, despite its height of less than five feet. They were quite greenish in color when picked, but have now ripened to their beautiful eponymous color. That monochromatic coloring doesn't lend itself to a drawing quite as dramatic as the Gala variety that I drew a while back, but I really loved the brown marking on the skin near the stem. Now that apple season is upon us, I'm hoping to fit in drawings of a few more varieties for this series:

Any favorites you'd like me to look for?

Happy First Day of Autumn!

A Trio of Buttercup Squash

Prismacolor colored pencil on Stonehenge paper

(click to enlarge)

I love going to the grocery store or farmer's market in the fall. The piles of pumpkins, brightly colored gourds and winter squash are irresistible to me—and such a variety of shapes and colors! Many of these buttercup squash (not to be confused with butternut squash) look like little lidded jars or pots. They're pretty cute, and after we try them for dinner tonight, I'll let you know how they taste!

Here are some shots of my "models" and work-in-progress:

After I do the sketch, I often scan it and print it out at different sizes, so that I can pick just the right size for the final drawing.

Greens are tricky to scan: You can see that the greens are much more accurate in the daylight photo than in the scans...hopefully the final scan at the top of the post shows the true colors, or at least close!

If you're not all squashed out, 

take a look at my drawing of my all-time favorite winter squash here.

Happy First Day of Autumn!

Horned Melon

Horned Melon, Cucumis metuliferus

Prismacolor colored pencils on Stonehenge paper

Have you seen these little spiky creatures at your grocery store? I saw some a few months ago, but didn't buy one as I had no time to draw it then. I've been scouting the produce section for them ever since, and—lo and behold—there they were last weekend! (I was going to get two, but that was before I realized they were about $6 apiece. Yikes.)

The horned melon is also known as the kiwano melon or the African horned melon, but I prefer its cute nicknames: hedged melon, blowfish melon, and jelly melon.

I drew the outside first and tried to see if the spikes fell in any kind of pattern or symmetry. (You know about my obsession with radial symmetry in nature.) But they seemed to be rather randomly arranged. So imagine my surprise when I cut it in half to draw the inside: My cut went through 3 spikes that were in an almost perfect equilateral triangle! In fact, the whole cross-section was shaped like a circle with 6 flattened faces. The cross-section looks very much like a cucumber (which is in the same family).

I am intrigued by fruits and vegetables, such as watermelon and kiwi, whose insides are in sharp contrast to their outerwear. This one pretty much wins the prize in that category, doesn't it?
(And, no I haven't tasted it...yet!)