5/30/2017 9:20:52 AM
Next to portrait art, my favorite subject is nature, especially garden flowers. This piece was created from a photo that I took in my own garden after a rainstorm, when the sun first breaks through the clouds and the water droplets hang from the foliage and blooms. I began this piece as a "filler" - something small to complete between larger and more labor-intensive portraits. It was an experiment in light and color, the focus of the main subject contrasting with the hazy images in the background. After I transferred the line drawing to the paper, I began mapping out the darkest areas with Prismacolor Black Grape. It's a great shade for underpainting in shadows or in areas where you want the color to be the deepest. It doesn't dull color as a black or grey would. A red with blue undertones would work as well, but sometimes peeks through. After that, I work dark to light (usually), mapping out and saving the whites of the paper and the lightest, brightest colors. Then I blend the lights and darks where they meet, keeping soft edges where the darks and lights meet, especially in the blurry areas. Three types/brands of pencils are used - Luminance, Prismacolor, and Polychromos. I select the pencil by the color, consistency and the need to hold a point or not rather than because I perceive one brand as superior to another. Difference brands act in different ways on different papers (confusing, right?) and different colors in the same brand can have much different (that word again) qualities. The Icarus painting board that I use is a heated drawing surface that helps soften the pencils, making them more "blendy" and allowing me to intensify color without as many layers. Colored pencil is a very slow medium and the heat speeds things up just a bit, allowing more time for new pieces or a bit of gardening!
5/23/2017 1:33:20 PM
Water and kids are two of my favorite subjects for colored pencil paintings. These children are exploring in the headwaters of Turtle Creek, just outside of Turtle Lake in far northern Winchester Wisconsin. Isn't this just how you picture the perfect summer vacation? It seems like a lot of people thought so, because when I first posted the painting to my Facebook page, Color in Light - Cindy Mottl's Colored Pencil and Watercolor Art, it reached almost 2,000 people thanks to all the likes, shares and comments. That surprised me because I wasn't sure I had accomplished my goals of capturing the spirit of those children and the feel of freedom in a summer day in the magic of the Northwoods. Artists are hard on themselves! In this piece I used a combination of Prismacolor, Luminance and Polychromo pencils. The pencils are chosen by the color choices and the type of mark that pencil in that color in that brand makes, rather than the idea that one brand is superior to another. My paper for this is Stonehenge white. Like the pencils, I choose my paper to work with my subject matter. Stonehenge is relatively smooth for good detail and takes lots of layers of color. Color lifts easily with an electric eraser or a piece of tacky putty, allowing for corrections or to bring back pops of light. Some of the white dots where scratched in with an embossing stylus.
5/23/2017 9:48:59 AM
So... my very first oil pastel painting. I decided to set out of my comfort zone of colored pencils and watercolor to experiment with a medium that reminded me of my college training in oil paint at Knox College, where I majored in studio art and education. The subject matter of this piece comes from one of my favorite places - the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois. You'll see me reference it again and again in my florals and landscapes. I used Neopastels and Sennelier oil pastels on Fabriano soft press watercolor paper. It has a texture a bit like a fine linen canvas with lots of gesso. That texture shows through the pastels in a way that works for the piece, but it made it a real challenge as the oil pastels wanted to stick to the high texture and skip the valleys. I had to use paper stumps to press it into the pits of the textured paper. Oil pastels are dustless, which is a big plus for me, and they are layer in much the same way as oil paint. It's like oil paint in stick form. I plan to used them more frequently for landscape work, and incorporate colored papers.
5/23/2017 9:36:52 AM
"Red" grew up at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois and is named for my cat, Redington...and it's color. The Morton is one of my favorite places to gather subject matter for paintings, both landscape and florals. This one was done with a technique called Disappearing Purple - I used shades of purple pencils for underpainting in the darkest areas. The paper, BFK Rives, is a printmaking paper and is a bit "fuzzy." This aided the blurring of the background, but makes it impossible to lift color from the surface. No erasing! Pencils used - Polychromo, Luminance and Prismacolor brands. I pick the pencil by the color and qualities of the mark it makes, not because any one is an overall better pencil.
