For
reasons I never fully comprehended, I have long felt the need to refine
and practice my drawing skills, even though my profession doesn't demand
such skills. I toyed with several different mediums before stumbling
into colored pencils. Actually, the pictures shown here are all
watercolor colored pencil. I discovered this medium via an art magazine
that we were forced to subscribe to when taking an art class in high
school. They had run some kind of contest in the mag for high school
artists and the winner was a color-pencil rendered piece with such
smooth color transition that I decided then and there that I wanted to
try my hand at that medium. I forced my folks to take me to the closest
art museum where I picked up my first set of Caran D'Ache watercolor
pencils.
Most of these pics were done in
the early to mid 90's. Up until about '93 I was fascinated with
reproducing the masterful blending I recalled from that contest winner.
I also slaved to reproduce meticulous detail in every facet of the
picture. Unfortunately, this is pretty time consuming and it puts a
damper on your output. Sometime in '93, I stumbled onto a notebook
filled with simply-colored sketches I had done in my mid-teens that had
taken me about 1/20th of the time my current pics consumed. So I decided
to buy a new sketchbook and start fresh. Seizing upon this new spirit of
artistic simplicity, I also decided to experiment with styles, beginning
with a form of minimalism. The pictures in the second row are from that
notebook.
You'll also notice a decided
emphasis on female portraits. This is mostly to the fact that I usually
drew women and animals. As Dick VanDyke's character Bert said so
eloquently in Mary Poppins, "I drew what I likes and I likes
what I drew". For reasons still unknown to me, people clamored for
my animal pics. I have very few left that are in any condition to be
published. Perhaps it says something about my skill at drawing people...
:)
