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.

Finished Celebrity Portrait

Finally got Nicole Kidman's finished pencil portrait posted on my website. There are still a few days left in the current celebrity vote. Really looks like Sean Connery might be the winner . . . It ends May 31st.

I am currently working on creating some more original works and am happy to have a couple close to completion and ready for posting. Stay tuned!

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.

Just a reminder . . . Back Up Your Important Files

Not long ago I had suffered a loss. My computers hard drive kicked the bucket. It all happened quite suddenly and without warning. It started up fine and things were running normally. However, right in the middle of sending an e-mail, I received the dreaded "Blue Screen of Death." The screen was filled with lots of technical jargon, which I will by no means try to repeat. Suffice it to say, it was not good. The computer automatically tried to shut down and restart. Unfortunately, all that appeared was a black screen with the foreboding words "Insert boot disk." I knew then that it was toast.

What happened, I found out later, was the motor of my hard drive burned out. This probably happens more than we are aware. I had the computer for quite sometime, and was told I got longer life out of the hard drive than most. This doesn't change the fact that we become quite reliant on them, and use them to store so much of our lives - special e-mails, favorite pictures, not to mention important business files.

Fortunately, I had recently backed up most of the business files. I am sad though that all my other personal things might be lost forever. Many files we collect are irreplaceable. For example, family pictures, or the high res scans I had of my graphite pencil art. Obviously I can get replacements of the art scans if I still have the piece, but many of the originals belong to others.

I have a great computer guru working on the hard drive, but finding a replacement motor to match the drive isn't easy. The motor must match exactly, and since it is an older drive of odd size, that will be a challenge. Then, the new motor needs to be installed in a truly clean environment. At least I have my computer back with a new, larger 160 gig drive.

So, just a friendly reminder, to back up anything on your hard drive that is important to you. I am now looking into investing in an automatic back up system. Although at this point it is like "closing the barn door after the horses have left."

Don't let this happen to you!

Update July 14, 2008:

As I mentioned in the original post, the motor in my hard drive died. Despite the fact that the hard drive size was rare, I managed to find a drive on EBay to use as a donor. Unfortunately, once my computer guy got the old drive opened up, it turned out the drive pin had broken and scratched he disk surface. So, my worst fears was realized, and all information was lost.

I guess I will spend some time trying to recover all the copies of my artwork. hopefully I have some original images backed up on my SD cards . . .

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. :)