I continue to work on the lessons from the online course about drawing birds in colored pencil. I have decided I really dislike one aspect of this medium intensely. The propensity for colored pencil leads (the pigment actually, no lead involved!) to break when being sharpened. No matter how carefully I sharpen or which sharpening technique I use, once the pencil's creamy center snaps, it continues to put forth broken bits of color. This media is fretfully fragile, and at $2 per pencil that is a lot of money down the drain when a pencil repeatedly breaks when sharpening. A major problem being that often the 'lead' can be cracked within the shaft because of improper handling, prior to purchasing. I don't improperly handle my pencils, but who knows what they went through at the manufacturing plant, their travels or how they were handled in the store. Open stock pencils, in particular may have been dropped on concrete floors by previous customers and I would have no way of knowing this when purchasing. After this class, I will not likely use them in a way that would require repeatedly purchasing more. It's a shame because if I could be certain a pencil is sound, I enjoy the marks they make.
Any who...
Here are the latest sketches done...
 |
| The only good Grackle is a drawn one. No mess, no noise, no displacing of our native species! ;) |
 |
| We were supposed to draw a mockingbird egg, but I didn't have a clear reference photo, so opted for the Quail. |
Next up, the lesson I've most looked forward to... the nest! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment