Wednesday, November 13, 2019

November snow!

It's been an unusually cold November, so far. We've already had snow and single digit temperatures. I'm ready for the more typical weather we are expecting next week, which will allow me to get outside in the yard again!

I'm not teaching classes this month. I had a long list of things I wanted to get done during my "break," but what has happened is that I have been spending a lot of time making art! I have a backlog of botanical artwork that needs to be finished, and I am getting things done for our next Great Plains GNSI show at Lauritzen Gardens next year. While things are not going as I had planned, I am really pleased with how things are working out. I'm also coming to the conclusion that I just want to maintain this blog as my social media outreach at the moment.

I am working on several acrylic paintings for our show of plants and pollinators. After lots of drawing and colored pencil work, I am enjoying using thicker paints and brushes again. This morning, I finished a painting of a flower fly, and started work on a monarch caterpillar (I love those)!

And I've continued working on a horticultural history project for the Sarpy County Museum. This has been a fascinating research project, and I hope to share more about it at a later date.

Here is a photo of the flower fly painting before I finished it- the wings on the fly and the disk flowers are unfinished. At this point, it is about halfway done. When I first get the thought that I am almost finished, I know that it really means I have reached the halfway point, and it was definitely true for this one.
unfinished Flower Fly, © Camille Werther 2019


Friday, July 19, 2019

Using technology in traditional drawing

Most of my work is done using traditional art media: pencils, colored pencils, watercolors, acrylics, and gouache. However, I also like to use modern technology to help me do a better job with my traditional drawings and paintings. This post will explain a little bit about my strategy.


This is an *unfinished* pencil drawing of a silver maple leaf. I learned a while back to plot out my dark values first, no matter what media I am using. I don't trust myself to get beyond my initial love of color and on to value. It's a different process than traditional watercolorists use, but it's the only way I can work without producing something lacking a full value range. Incidentally, this photo is distorted- it was not taken directly over the drawing, but at an angle. That's ok for what I am doing with it, but if I were documenting a finished work, I would make sure the camera was level. You can tell it's off by the odd upward-looking angle of the leaf petiole. For what I am doing here, I'm also unconcerned about the light streak on the side.






I use a fairly soft pencil (2B or 4B) to plot in the dark values, and will have to go back later with a much harder pencil in the H range to smooth out the graininess. I have not yet done this in this drawing. It's still in a rough stage. I also have not yet begun to fill in the highlight areas you see here with a layer of 2H pencil.


When I get to this point in a drawing, I'll take a cell phone picture like the one here, and enlarge it on my screen. By doing this, I can find errant lines and inspect the margins of the drawing for stray marks. I'm finding this a lot easier than the traditional method of working with a magnifying glass. In this example, there are two stray lines that go over the midrib. I missed them when I looked at it with the magnifying glass, but caught it when I enlarged the photo on my cell phone screen. The drawing will look alarmingly grainy when enlarged this way, but I still find it useful. It reminds me that I have more work to do to smooth out those dark values.


Pencil drawings can be a slow process. I go back to these several times over the course of a couple of days to see if the picture is still working. I will also take several photos along the way to see if I can catch any more stray marks. In the case of this drawing, I know that the stray marks happened because I was working too late into the evening without my good lights turned on! My leaf was drying out, and I wasn't sure I could get another- but I am now on my third leaf specimen for this drawing.


Do you also use a cell phone camera to help you see areas to improve in your drawings?


It's the middle of summer here, and I am hearing the cicadas again. I don't know if they just started this week, or if I just became aware of them. There are years when I do a double take and smile when I hear them- but I don't know if they have been producing background music for weeks, or have just started. This is probably one of those years!

Friday, February 15, 2019

Snowy day, drawing time.

a messy desk


This week has been an adventure. My desk is full of projects, but I have to admit I am loving the mess. I'm done with the monarch caterpillar munching milkweed, and moving on to a line drawing of obtusa oak- I learned it as Quercus obtusa, but I believe it is now classified as Q. laurifolia.


And then I will move on to the silver maple keys.


It is so peaceful to draw at my table as the snow falls outside. I hope this day finds you happy and warm.