Have You Ever Really Looked At One Of These?

Poinsettias are weird looking, aren't they? Kind of alien-like, even. I was mildly disturbed while I was drawing it and things I've read about Georgia O'Keeffe paintings started to make sense.

But I digress ...

You're back to see what I've accomplished and I've done pretty well if I do say so myself. I finished the shadows last night. I know, I said I was going to stop, but I didn't. I was having fun, okay?

Today I started adding color. Please don't follow my lead in this regard. Every art teacher I've ever had will tell you I do this wrong.

Every art teacher I've ever had has stressed the importance of working on the piece as a whole. You shouldn't focus on any one area, but rather build up colors and values in layers over the whole drawing. The benefit to working on the whole piece is you have time to make decisions and avoid mistakes and you'll probably have a more cohesive piece.

I do that with watercolors, which pretty much demand you work in layers all over. But with colored pencil? Yeah, I don't do that. I work in short bursts of time, so instead of laying down the lightest red all over, I concentrate on one leaf.

I get as far as I can with that one leaf before reality intrudes and I have to get someone food or break up a fight or remember how to spell encyclopedia (enc-yc-lo-pedia). Then I come back three hours later and hopefully pick up with the next leaf. 

I got farther than I expected today and I think it's going well. The goal is to finish this by the end of the weekend. That should be doable. Probably.