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robertsloan2 — Water Lilies
Published: 2005-03-17 19:57:19 +0000 UTC; Views: 1748; Favourites: 35; Downloads: 63
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Prismacolor on paper, 9 x 12"Water lilies drawn from a sample image that came with my Dell laptop, this is a full deep burnished Prismacolor rendering. Intended to demonstrate among other things shading and flat areas without strokes showing in the darkest values, it came out really cool and took forever to finish. I blogged here about this one, this is the cool Water Lilies one that I may do a print of once I start my prints account. Or use as one piece in a Floral Calendar along with the Prehistoric Life Calendar, I may do both. Calendars are cool. They're a reason to do a series.
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Comments: 23
wow..i likes the flowers..the lilly pads themselves are a bit one demintional but hey! that was the point..
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Thank you! This one took me a long time but it was a lot of fun to do.
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@_@ Magnificent use of colours ! WOW ^^ KEWL ! @_@ AMAZING REALISM !! 
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Beautiful, sir! Just beautiful!
The depth is exquisite, particularly when paired with the unusual angle of the flowers. I have a dark monitor, so the entire back layer looks completely black to me. But knowing you, I suspect that there is something more to it than just black. Do tell! At any rate, the dark backdrop serves to bring the flowers and lily pads into focus; It demands that I pay attention to the plants. It also lends to the depth, somehow... As if there is a lot more space to be seen behind them. Very striking!
I also like that you added a shadow to this, as it added an element of directionality to the lighting and contrast. The color choices and various textures are pleasing as well, though you know how I feel about being able to see the paper. As for that white border, which I have seen a prior complaint or two concerning, I think it plays a decent role in this drawing. When my eyes come from the plants to that border, it is shocking, but it serves as a stark reminder that this is just a piece of paper, not the wilderness. It brings the viewer back.
Great stuff! I hope to reach your level of talent someday.
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Purr thanks! There is detail in the dark background, it's lost in the little icon version but on the full view it should show stems from the leaves crossing under the water between them. Glad you liked that irregular attempt at a vignette border. I think next time I try that it'll be with an oval drawing, I'll mark it out neatly and lightly in graphite and work out the gradient ahead of time -- know where the border of the full saturation falls and try to work outward evenly from that toward a line that'll become the edge of the mat.
The shadows were there from the beginning, I always liked those to show the light. I had fun doing that one, it took a long time.
You already have that level of talent.
You need some practice to get to my level of skills, and I'm 50 years old -- so I've been puttering a long, long time at it. You probably have a much faster learning curve, seriously. You're pouring a lot into this, so you may have more talent -- by my definition and David Gerrold's.
Talent is enthusiasm. It's a willingness to keep doing it before you get those fine professional results everyone is agog at, and get closer and closer to what's in your mind at every step. Count your successes and blow off failed trials as interesting possibilities -- in art especially they often become serendipity.
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How long exactly did this take you? I think this is marvelous. I love flowers, and water lilies are no difference. The rich colours used in this piece are wonderful and make me feel very warm when looking at this, I really like the colours you have used to create the effect of the petals, the pinks, purples and whites are so lovely and blend together prefectly, especially with that hint of blue you have added to certain petals. They also work well with the deep and bright greens of the pads. The murky background and hints of foreground add a lovely watery effect that makes it feel so real, rather than having just a blue to make that water effect. This looks absolutly great. I also like how you have framed this by the white "border".
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One of the things about color and this piece is that I use Prismacolors, and years ago got the full 120 color set with every color in their range. I blend them, and usually on any flower will use at least a dozen colors on any given petal or leaf. I layer them. Prismacolor is transparent. It's dry media that has some of the translucent qualities of oil or that wax painting technique, not impasto, whatchacallit, the ancient one, gahh lemme check Blick catalog because it has supplies to actually do it. Encaustic. That's what I was trying to say. It's as close to encaustic as you can get in something that's portable and they've gotten better on lightfastness.
So when I lay in the rough colors matching the color of what I'm drawing, then I start burnishing over them with lighter colors and adding complements and close values, balancing those back and forth. The wider a range of colors I have available the richer it comes out. On backgrounds I try to pay attention to the real colors of the background elements and details like the half-submerged stems help keep me from having to fill in large flat areas -- it comes out better, and avoids a problem many artists have with Prismacolors which is that filling in a flat area of unshaded color will have unintended shading from the directions of the heavy strokes, or they'll shine and show the patterns of the strokes which break up the natural look of it the way they do on flat-black graphite areas. Most of the time if I do water it's not blue so much as whatever color it is in the reference, the only blue water I've done is the occasional sunny ocean scene where it does reflect a mostly clear sky.
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Weeks. I spent weeks on this one, like most of my Prismacolor drawings. It's one of eight drawings in a hardbound 9 x 12" sketchbook I got at Yule, a present from one of my ex-housemates -- that particular sketchbook is turning into "all good finished drawings and paintings" and I've only got eight pieces in it so far. Elf, this, the Orange Wildflowers, the yet to be posted Permian Scene that came out a lot better than I expected, a big iris, a finch in watercolor, a light drawing of a winter tree and an apple that I stared at for about a week before I finally drew it and ate it. More of my drawings are small but when I go to do large Prismacolor pieces I usually put them in the good collection book. It's the only sketchbook I've had that doesn't have pages I go "skip that" or just get embarrassed, the scribbles go in the spiral bound one where I can keep them or throw them out or hang them if they come out good. Or in the pocket sized ones that I take to appointments and things just to stay sane.
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Purrr thanks! I'm having fun working on Rose to Remember again and got all my sepia darks in, then took a break -- it looks so much cooler now that the background has these little darks in it and all the leaves are defined by their negative space. I think I'm sort of in a mood for drawing things in negative space, this is just like what I did yesterday on the white flower.
Have you ever tried drawing something by drawing all the space around it first, doing the background and leaving the dragon or horse or flower blank till you fill in everything else? It's fun and looks really cool when it's half done. Especially when it's a lot of different overlapping leaf shapes, that gets eerie and cool.
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Oooh the realizm, nicely captured! tis wonderfully shaded and colored!
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Thanks! That's what I was trying for, depth and realism. I love what Prismacolors do when I go insane with them...
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That is simply fantastic, you'll never cease to amaze me.
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Purr thank you! I had fun with this one, and a suggestion has me thinking of reworking it some more too (around the edges and some shadows at the top).
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I went through your pics and decided to comment on only the best, since you have so many. As far as I'm concerned, this is the most realistic and definitely my favorite of the devs for today. I love the roses, but this is just too good. *G* The only thing I could think of to critique on is the piece doesn't hold you in it quite right. As a composition, it tends to either tie the eye right to the middle of the pic, unable to wander the rest without difficulty, or just splatters the view to the white borders. Perhaps a bit of shadow on the leaves around the top, just a tiny hint, to add a curve to the piece. I know what you did is what they would look like on a sunny day without any shade around, but we can see the whole pond, then, and that provides the border. *G* All in all, it's a Great job!
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That's a neat idea! I'll think about it. This isn't the version I'd put up for a print anyway, I'll probably crop the ragged edges out if I set this up for a print. I don't want to carry it all the way to the edges because it's in a hardbound sketchbook.
Though if I work on it again I might take the outermost edges of the leaves that stick out, and draw guidelines that give it a hard edge and work right up to that edge instead of that attempt at vignetting it -- I got a little confused as to whether to make the edge smooth or not and some leaves extended outside the border. You're right that it gets a little confusing and yeah, a shadow or several shadows could fix that. I thought of putting some shadows of tree branches falling across the pond like this was close to the edge too. Thanks for a good suggestion!
Now I'll ruminate on it for a couple of weeks before messing with it again though, because I've got other things in progress. Thanks for your critique! Purr!
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wow beautiful work ..may i ask whats prismacolour?? aint heard of that b4 ..yea calender what a great idea !!! I'll check out the rest of yer work when i got a moment .... Hellena
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Prismacolor is a well known brand of expensive artist quality colored pencils often used by illustrators and occasionally fine artists. Prismacolor has a range of 120 colors and also has some related products like Art Stix -- just the colored pencil leads but shaped like conte crayons, for filling in large areas, the Verithin pencils which are harder and sharpen to a fine point for details, and now a range of watercolor pencils as well. I discovered them years ago when I was in high school. Okay, decades. I got them because all the other sets of colored pencils had 36 colors max and Prismacolor had a 72 color set -- their then biggest.
I got addicted to their strong pigments, soft texture and easy blending. Much later on while I was doing street portraits in pastel, I bought my supplies mail-order to save money and got the 120 color set when it first came out, at a very low $36 loss leader price from my favorite mail order company's sale flyer. Since then I've been replacing the pencils in that big set. The cardboard box died about 8 years ago and I kept them loose in a ziplock bag or in a wooden slide top box until last fall I got a great leather zippered case that works even better than the original box for keeping them organized.
There are many different artist grade colored pencils, but each one has its own formula and its own feel. Prismacolors are still a favorite even though Cretacolor's Aqua Monolith woodless watercolor pencils are coming in as their own neat medium -- they are very different and since I love doing colored pencil works, I may wind up accumulating multiple sets. That would also extend my color range for some of these artworks.
Recently since I got into DeviantArt, I've run into other Prismacolor fans and gotten inspired to do more Prismacolor artworks. To get the best out of them takes going over the same area several times in different colors to get exactly the right shade -- they blend well and can go on heavy. I also used the colorless blender pencil on this one to eliminate the last white speckles from the paper texture coming up through the drawing. It really makes a difference, it's like "unfading" something.
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hey wow ty 4 the info ..they sound fun to work with ..i have always found normal coloured pencils lead too hard and lightly coloured ...cool i will give them a go one of these days... 
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Yep. That's exactly what they are -- hard and too lightly colored. My ex housemate Starweaver and I both did a test of several brands of colored pencils. He had a good set of Design Spectracolors and I had my Prismacolors, we both had sets of Cretacolor Aqua Monolith watercolor pencils, and we had a set of Crayolas and a set of RoseArt sitting around -- the normal brands.
I did a sketch of a pomegranate on my windowsill using only colors all five sets had in common, and repeated it stage for stage trying to use the same pressure and techniques. Even from here I can see that the Prismacolor image and the Spectracolor image ar ethe best, with the Aqua Monoliths coming close -- and of the five, the Prismacolor one came out with the richest color. The other two look like faded versions of the first ones. RoseArt was the worst, you could barely get any coverage with it.
But for some reason those brands are required in schools. I noticed the lists of school supplies from different schools up as handouts in Hobby Lobby, and got shocked that they require "RoseArt or Crayola, no other brands" on the colored pencils.
If you go to Dick Blick online and look up "Colored Pencils" in their alphabetical listings, they organize the brands into Artist Grade and Student Grade. Any of the Artist Grade brands are good and should give you good deep color saturation. Even though Prismacolors continue to be my favorite I'm considering picking up 12 or 24 color trial sets of the other Artist Grade brands both to see if I can extend the color range and to see what the others are like. I'm definitely getting a set of 72 Aqua Monoliths because those are great in their own way -- they are a little more expensive but that's because you're getting heavy woodless all-pigment pencils that last a lot longer. Even the shavings could be used for watercolor if you want to be frugal.
But mainly I want to pick up the other sets of Prismacolor products for their own styles -- the Art Stix to cover large areas like crayons, the Verithins which are hard but sharpen to a narrow point and are good for details, and their set of watercolor pencils which is completely color matched with the rest. Their marker sets are too pricy when I don't do much with markers and would want to get the whole setup with all 144 colors instead of settling for a smaller set.
12 colors is the usual trial set, but that doesn't give much range. I find that for a small set that's portable, 24 colors or 36 is still small enough to take places and do outdoor sketching, or to try out a brand, but I don't wind up fishing for a basic color I haven't got with a 24 color set.
The other thing Prismacolor does is put out "landscape" and "portrait" sets with the colors most used for those subjects -- lots of earth tones and few cool tones in the Portrait set, lots of blues and greens and some browns in the Landscape set. I'm considering picking up a Landscape set because I seem to wear down the Landscape colors faster than most of the rest! If my prints start taking off here and my Prismacolor artworks are what's going well, that could well be worth it versus constantly having to replace specific cool colors out of open stock.
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Thanks! I love doing Prismacolors when I've got the time to do them in that kind of burnished depth, mixing colors in semitransparent layers.
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