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Now you can purchase gift certificates for any pencil portrait or photo editing service. Certificate amounts start at $20, and increase in $5 increments. Certificates are hand lettered with calligraphy. Good for one year!

Learn more and buy a gift certificate now!

Art Contests

I found an interesting art community website called A Singular Creation. One thing I like is that they run free art contests every month. The Art Showdown Contests all have different themes, and there is small prizes, normally $50 for the winner. The winner is featured with a small statement form the artist, but 4 pieces also receive honorable mention. Each artist can enter 3 pieces. See the Art Showdown Contest Rules and Guidelines.

This months art contest hit me right in the middle since the subject was portraits. I entered 2 celebrity pencil portraits, Tony Shalhoub and Elizabeth Taylor. I also entered my graphite portrait of the sweet little boy, Deaven. I was extremely pleased, and surprise, when, out of 299 entries, Deaven was chosen as one of the 16 finalists. The finalists are currently open for public vote, and will remain so until Oct. 6. the it goes to the final vote of the judges, and the winner will be announced Oct 10th. I hope you will check out all the finalists and casts votes for your favorites. There are some really nice pieces.

I honestly don't expect to win, but am hopeful for honorable mention. That would be a big enough boost for my ego. :)

This months contest is black and white, again another nice match for me. I plane to enter a couple original pieces, one of which I am trying to get done before the Oct 14 deadline. Check out the contest themes and deadlines.

New Artwork

I added my new art work "Sasha" to my Fine Art America gallery several days ago.




Sasha is the name of my recently adopted cat. I found out the name means "moon" in Hindu, and a cat with the moon seemed to be a perfect fit! I really wanted the moon to have some detail, so I based it on a royalty free high res picture of the moon. It was neat to be able to see all the craters on it's surface.

I added a little color to her blue eyes with some pastel chalk.

I also added some high res pictures of some of my older portraits and celebrity art to my gallery. Clicking on them in the gallery brings up a detailed high res preview of the pictures.

I am still trying to recreate my collection of digital files from my art, which were lost in the hard drive crash a few months ago. All the images I just added had to be photographed and loaded again.

Back Again!

Well, my blog has suffered again because I was on vacation. I had a fantastic time with my family. Unfortunately, it seems to be my routine to go out of town and come back sick!

Enough about that though! On to drawing news. I am working on an original, that is really coming along quite nicely. Sometimes pieces surprise me and wind up being easier than I expected. I am going to be very vague, so everyone can venture some guesses. It has an animal with unique eyes. It is set at night, with the moon at its back. I plan to render everything in graphite, except the eyes that will be in color. I think it will be a nice look.

I had a fun time drawing with one of my nephew while I was away. That has been our tradition in recent years, to draw together from the same picture. This time it was R2-D2 from Star Wars. Droids are a challenging subject! However, I kind of enjoying doing something with sharp angles and hard lines. It is totally different from portraits of people, that is lots of soft edges and flowing lines.

Well, that's all the news for now. Watch for a post about my finished original soon, and see if you guessed right. :)

New Original Graphite Work

I have posted an original entitled "Cover Girl" in my Fine Art America Gallery. I was hoping to capture the look of a vintage magazine, with maybe a little old Hollywood thrown in. It was a lot of fun to do, though I have to admit it didn't turn out like I wanted. I guess we are always our own worst critics though. :) However, I do like the contrast the carbon borders created with graphite drawing.

A Rainy Day in the Neighborhood

Well, there has been lots of wet stuff here today, and very little sun in the sunshine state. :) So, I decided to include in this post, some suggestions for protecting pencil portraits from the elements, and helping them stand the test of time.

For those who purchased a pencil portrait:

Keep your pencil drawing from water and direct sunlight.
Well, these are obvious! Water is a given, it will cause irreparable damage, and direct sun can speed the yellowing of your paper.

When storing, framed or not, keep in a climate controlled area.
Avoid putting any pencil drawing in a basement or attic where they can be exposed to high humidity or wide ranges of temperature. If you plan to store your portrait without a frame, put it between two sheets of clean paper, and then two pieces of stiff cardboard. This will protect the drawing from any bending.

When framing your pencil portrait, frame it with glass.
Many frames come with the clear plastic rather than glass. However, glass always works better for pencil, since it will never stick to the graphite.

For Pencil Artists:

Pencil artists most likely are familiar with how to protect their drawings. However, if you draw steadily like me, you probably are starting to get quite a collection of drawings. Sometimes it can be hard to find places to put them! I really like the storage options available at Dick Blick. I have bought some of their flat storage, and it makes it easy to keep drawings flat, out of dust and danger of damage. Really though, anyplace you can keep your drawings stored flat and out of dust, dampness, and sun will work fine. One thing you could do, is line a drawer with archival paper and store drawings flat there. Keep paper between drawings to prevent graphite or color from transferring.

I also like portfolio binders to hold drawings, since they protect and make a nice presentation. Although portfolios won't work if your drawings are large or of different sizes. If you would like to show your drawings, but don;t want to risk transporting and presenting the originals, or, if there are different sizes, as I mentioned, there is a solution. Scan your drawings into the computer, or take digital pictures of them. Then, use a graphics program like Photoshop to resize all the drawings to the size of your portfolio, and make prints of them. This way, you have a nice presentation book, but the originals are safe at home.

Celebrity Pencil Portraits

I am currently working on my pencil portrait of Nicole Kidman. She was the winner in the last celebrity vote on my web site. The voting for the current list ends May 31, 2008. So, if you want to cast a vote, you better hurry! Currently it looks like Sean Connery may be the winner, although Harrison Ford and Nicholas cage are close behind.

I plan to add much more detail, especially to her hair and eyes before her portrait is finished.

I plan to have Nicole Kidman finished by the end of the month. I haven't been able to devote much time to her recently. I still enjoy doing celebrity portraits, but I have been trying to put more effort into creating some original pieces. Every once in awhile though, I find it relaxing to work on a celebrity portrait just for fun. I find them a great way to experiment with different graphite techniques too. There are still some I would like to draw, so I am sure I will eventually be adding more celebrity drawings to my site.

New Portrait

I recently finished a new graphite pencil portrait. While this is not yet available for viewing on my website, I did quickly post the high-res pic on my Fine Art America gallery. Hope you enjoy seeing it!

A New Toy . . .

I stumbled across a great Squidoo page, and subsequently a great website by artist Marsha Robinette. (She also has a nice blog.) She is a pencil artist who works primarily with carbon pencil. I had never experimented with carbon, so on reading about it and seeing some of her fantastic work, I bought some and decided to give them a try.

They definitely are of different character then graphite. Carbon pencils are pure black, and shine free. They are also unforgiving, so you better be sure you lay them down where you want them since they don't erase as well as graphite. They come in different grades which are scaled like graphite with higher B numbers being softer and darker. In the pack of Wolff's carbon Pencils I purchased from Dick Blick were B, 2B, 4B, and 6B.

I still prefer primarily using graphite. Although, previously, when I needed something very dark in a drawing, I would mix charcoal on top of graphite. This reduced the shine and made some nice dark shadows. I did this in my celebrity drawing of 7 of 9 . I couldn't quite get the darkness in the shadows of her uniform with graphite, so I blended charcoal into the darkest parts. I have begun using carbon in much the same way. I believe I prefer it to charcoal because it is not quite as soft and messy, and gives a wonderful flat black tone. I especially like carbon for the pupils of eyes.

I doubt I will ever do drawings completely out of carbon, but I have enjoyed having it available to add a deeper tone to my drawings.

Site Updates

I finally did a little work on my site today. My real goal is to do a complete overhaul and redesign in the next few months, but so far, I haven't even had time to even get started! Been too busy at the drawing desk and the computer designing websites. So, pencilsandpixelsart.com waits for the moment.

Today I added small thumbnails of a couple of my original works to the "Original Works" page. There are also links there to my Gallery Shop so customers can view high res shots and buy prints.

I plan to have many more original works online ASAP. :)

Success!

Finally, I succeeded in getting three of my original pieces onto the Fine Art America site. So I hope you will take a look! Nicole's Gallery The piece "Daydreams" was my first attempt with Generals pastel chalk pencils. I found I really like them because they blend easily and erase! That is always a plus with me. ;) I do wish they had a wider range of colors. I used carbon pencils for the blackest black of her eyes, and used graphite to had some shading to certain areas.

The tips about getting my pieces digital offered, by fellow pencil artist Darla, were quite helpful. I also found that late afternoon sunlight can help immensely in getting a nice clear photo. :) Please be sure and take a look at Darla's blog, I am sure you will enjoy it.

I will be adding more art work soon, so stay tuned!

More challenging then it should be . . .

I am still struggling to get some of my original works ready to upload to Fine Art America. It should be much easier than this! I just can't seem to get a clear, high definition image of them. Unfortunately, the bed on my scanner, which does nice work, is too small to accommodate the paper sizes. So, I am tying to get some good digital pictures. This is harder than it sounds.

I have an 8 mega pixel camera, so there should be plenty of resolution. In the past, I have taken pictures in the late afternoon in indirect light, and they came out pretty well. At least, they were good enough for display on the web. However, there were always some issues with them. First, clarity, second, avoiding the "graphite glare", and third, edge curving. Since now my goal is to have a perfectly clear high res image to be available for reproduction prints, this creates problems.

First, the depth of field on the camera seems to never be quite wide enough. I always wind up getting some blurring on the images where the focus faded away. So, I need to take the picture centered, without filling up the entire frame. This of course cuts down on the resolution. Not an issue for web display, but since I want these to be available for print, I would like to squeeze out as much resolution as possible. Also, the focus needs to be right on, and crystal clear.

The second issue really involves the type of lighting. Graphite has reflective properties, so the lighting must be indirect, but bright enough to avoid needing the flash. That is a hard line to walk. Using the flash will just "white out" portions of the image. Direct sunlight creates the same issue, as well as the heat from the sun seems to love curling up the edges of my paper.

Third, is the edge curving in the final image. I am not sure if this is the nature of camera lenses, or user error. I will take an picture of a drawing laying perfectly flat, and holding the camera as steady and level as possible. However, when I load it onto the computer to crop it, the edges are never square. Sometimes it is worse then others, but it is frustrating. I wind having to crop off some edges of the image in order to get it "squared." I have had this issue with a couple different digital cameras, so it may be I just am not holding the camera as level as I think.

I guess I will experiment with some different lighting inside and see what happens. Although, in the end I may wind up having to get professional scans. If anybody has some suggestions, I will look foreword to hearing them.

Well, back to the drawing board. Literally, actually, I have a few projects I am working on. :)

Recent News on my Neglected Blog

Well, it is obvious I haven't been paying attention to this poor blog! I am going to try to do better! :)

I recently finished a graphite pencil portrait, which will be on my site soon. It is of an adorable little boy dressed in his Grandpa's over sized football jersey, and holding a football. Too cute!

I just recently created a gallery on Fine Art America. It is a great site for artists and those who love all mediums of art. I plan to have my original graphite works displayed there and have prints of them for sale. However, I need to get some high quality of them first. So, for the time being, I have some of my photography posted there. Be sure and take a look! I have some beautiful shots from Maui. Visit Nicole's gallery

I also do web design, and am happy to announce the launch of Savoir Faire Weddings new site. if you are interested in a web design contact me a nihwebdesign@yahoo.com.

The Frustrated Artist

Creating artwork can be a great stress reliever, but I think all artists have had projects that reach the point of frustration. I know I have. It may be your project just doesn't come together right. For example, in my case, a pencil portrait may not look like it should - the mouth seems wrong, or the eyes are slightly off. Often the problem remains oblivious to others, who will probably think the drawing, painting, or whatever looks fine. This often just compounds our frustration. However, artist's are always their own worst critics, and we often frustrate ourselves trying to make our work perfect.

So, what is the best way to solve this problem? I have found a few things that help me.

1. The number one and most important thing to do if a project has gone from fun to frustrating - Walk Away. Put the project on the shelf for awhile, and maybe even work on something else. Leaving the project alone lets you come back and look at it fresh. Once picking it up again, you may be able to quickly see what needs to be adjusted. There is no limit on how long you leave it alone. I have occasionally let a project sit for weeks before finishing it. Obviously this is a little harder if you have a deadline, but take what time you can - even if it's just a break for a snack or watching your favorite TV show.


2. Do not take your frustration out on your artwork. You will wind up with more troubles if you, for example, push too hard with your pencil, or erase too hard and damage your paper. When you feel this way, read and follow number one.


3. Try not to be too hard on yourself about your work, and don't compare yourself with others. Many artist's feel their work is never quite good enough, or quite what they wanted to achieve. This especially applies to new artists. It takes time to become proficient in a medium. So, my best advice is to be patient, and do not compare yourself with anyone. All artists develop their own unique style, and while it is good to learn from others, it is best not to compare your self with them.



4. Eventually, you may just have to start over. It is hard to scrap a project and start again, since usually there has been a lot of time and effort involved. However, the second time around, things often go much easier, and you may be more pleased with the results.

Hair Spray is for Hair, NOT Paper

I am a graphite pencil artist, and I am always disturbed by the number of people who suggest using hair spray as a substitute for spray-on Fixative. Step away from the can of Vidal Sassoon, and read on.

Most artists invest a lot of time and effort in their work. So, obviously you want to protect it from smudging and fading. This is especially important if you are working with mediums like graphite, charcoal or oil pastel. Believe me I understand wanting to do it cheaply. (Pennies often scream at the sound of my name.) However, you can get a can of Krylon Workable Fixative at Wal-mart for around 4 dollars. How much cheaper can you get??!!! It is a good product, so give it a try.

Do not risk destroying your art work with hair spray! It was not designed to seal or protect anything on paper, it is meant to be sticky and set hair. If you spray it on your work it could remain sticky and turn yellow. In other words, ruin your work!

Check out my websites:
www.pencilsandpixelsart.com - See some of my portraits here.
www.nihwebdesign.com

I will be updating my site with tons of articles on pencil drawing very soon. Until then, keep watching my blogs.