Embroidered Collage

  We were away visiting friends this weekend - saw a baseball game at Camden Yards - but I also did art in yesterday morning.  There were some gorgeous asiatic lilies on the table and I sketched them and played with the shapes.  I did a couple warm-ups, then moved onto trying a colored-pencil drawing.

  As I looked at the flower I could see the different shades of orange and yellow depending on where the light fell.  I wanted to capture the drama of the darker areas against the well-lit areas, but even the photo didn't quite pick that up.

For the amount of practice I've had, I'm pleased, but I couldn't capture the dark and light, or model the curving depths.  Being bolder with the shadows might have helped, but I couldn't figure out how to get the darker oranges with the pencils that I had available.  I tried using browns and greys, with some success.  I did get a nice bit of a punch when I put in some dark purples into the mix, not just on the center bits, as I expected from the complementary color combination.

Burnishing with the colorless blender made a huge difference in how pleased I was.  The flower popped out nicely.  Adding the background wasn't my best idea, but that's okay.  It was great practice.

Next I did something that was more along my lines of interest.  I tried abstraction.  I went for the petal shapes in one quick sketch, not shown here.  I was happier with my second try and began elaborating upon it, trying out some variations.

The light shading at center top didn't please me and the extra lines at bottom left just confused the issue.  I liked the neutral solid coloring on the upper right in some ways and also the solid coloring of the highlight/shadow areas in the upper left.  It was interesting to realize that I would have drawn this differently if I'd had a different shape of paper.  I'm seriously interested in taking these shapes further in practice, but we'll see if I get distracted by something else first.