This is the first "serious" bit of art I've done in way too long. It's from a tutorial in a book by Arlene Steinberg:
Click to view attachment
Prismas on Stonehenge, about 4 inches square, something like 90 minutes of work.

The trick she's demonstrating here is doing an underpainting in complementary colors to get the values. Here's part of the underpainting I did:
Click to view attachment

looks rich, has volume, light, the cast shadow can be more bold.Do you plan to leave like this or add a background.Yellow and avocado green would seem aprpropiate choices for a BG.

Wonderful startup, just hate those dry spells, I've been in one from painting for quite sometime myself, luckily I've been able to hide it in the guise of graphite.

Good to see you back with a bang Ernest !!

I have to do more exercises from Arlene's book - you did the underpainting beautifully!!

Great comeback..I also like the detail of the stem. Not just any tomato.

Thanks, all. I am happy with it. Every book you read gives you a new perspective and some new hints. This drawing gave me a better feel for "how slow to go" with colored pencils: very sharp pencils and very small circles for this one.

No additional background here, Elena -- if there were a colored background, it would need to reflect in the tomato, so it would change the whole drawing.

What is the title of the book? Would it be useful for a beginner (me)? I feel a visit to amazon.com coming on!

It's this book. It's actually not the first book like this that I'd recommend; if you don't have Janie Gildow's book here, I'd recommend it, first.

The Steinberg book has a lot of tutorials, but they're really all about developing color, not about drawing, per se. Most of her tutorials are of complex still lifes, and the very first step is such an enormous leap from the blank paper that you can't imagine how to get there. It's in the subsequent steps where she shows how she slowly develops color in layers that I found valuable.

The Gildow book, on the other hand, leads you more gradually into the drawings, which have more variety as well.

Both books give specific prismacolor pencil recommendations, which I find very helpful. Steinberg's book told me she sharpens her pencil "once per minute or more," which was a revelation for me, shows some pictures that make very clear how "squirkle size" impacts the look of the drawing, and includes a hand-drawn color chart which really helps in selecting pencils if you don't have one of the colors she mentions.

yay..its spring!! thats why our dryspells are going away..i love the job you did on it mr. hill, it looks edible, and ripe, and just picked and not for nothing but i kinda like that under painting by itself too.

Hi, Ernest. If i understand correctly you did this more like an exercise for the technique. This is valuable if also we can create threads containing lessons from books especially Colored pencil work and everybody does the lesson.
Just like a challenge in a way only it has directions for the technique applied.

I am tempted to try this project myself and do a life drawing of a tomato with this approach of the underpainting first. I love the texture you obtained and since my favorite pads are also Stonehedge I plan to give it a try adding the background also.Can I post the steps or final drawing here?

I love this idea! If it could possibly be done without copyright infringement, it would be a wonderful way to share.

If someone who reads a book explains the lesson in his own words or the steps of a technique I don't think this is considered copyright infringement.
In The watercolor thread Vicki just showed us step by step a technique in watercolor from a book she referred us to.And two or three members did that lesson with different results.It's a great way to learn and motivate yourself to work in different techniques.For instance when we do a lesson from Brenda's book is that considered copyright infringement?!You don't call it your technique, you just apply it in your art.

Sounds good to me...

I love using an underpainting.
You can use all grey, or you can use the complimentary colour, in painting it is called a grisaille.
Here is a link that explains it http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/246394/grisaille.

Nice work Ernest, good to see you back posting art.
I have had a big lapse and am finally getting back to doing art work also.

Very beautiful, Ernest.
Barb

Sure, absolutely.

So what I learned and tried to apply here are

1) Keep your points very sharp all the time: sharpen once per minute, at least.
2) Circulism using circles larger than a poppy seed but smaller than a mustard seed
3) On a scale of 1 to 5, use a pressure of about 2, until near the end, when you might go as high as 4
4) Remember to keep your highlights clean until the end
5) Don't press harder to go darker: use more layers, or use a different pencil

I used three greens for the initial underpainting (dark green, celadon green, and limepeel) plus indigo blue for the darkest spots. Then the dark parts of the tomato are layered with black cherry and tuscan red, and the light parts with cream and spanish orange, before starting to apply bright reds like poppy and crimson.

The actual drawing looks somewhat better than the photo; the depth of color is really toothsome. All those layers, carefully applied, gives the image tremendous depth. The sharp pencils applied in tiny circles gives a great surface finish and saturation. I did this at a relatively small size; the larger you work, the longer it would take, of course. I recommend keeping it small and working very slowly.

Thanks a lot, Ernest. I have a pad 5x7in. (Stonehedge) and this is my next project.It really appeals to try it.I did some tomatoes in oil pastel last year and I loved doing them.As a matter of fact the lesson that i tremendously enjoyed is Jeanette's lesson on tomatoes in CP.There you go for art.But yours is very good as well.and ...tempting to try it.

I've just ordered Janie Gildow's book from Amazon.co.uk. Expect miracles!!!

Speaking of books does anyone have the new one by Alonya Nickelson, Colored Pencil Painting Bible. I am getting ready to purschase it and wondered how it compared to some of the other ones.

Hello Nancy,

I got the book yesterday. So, I haven't read it all. Almost half of the book is theory. I think it is very informative and if I have a question I can open the book and I will find the answer how she would do it. The outline paintings for the examples of the book are not in the book. I've orderd them with a online-form. Today I got the addresses for the outline paintings and a letter. Because english is not my mother language I write the following sentence from the letter:

However, because these images are copyrighted you cannot sell any work that is based on these images, enter them in any juried competitions, print them for redistribution to others or upload them to the Internet. I hope you will respect the property of the author and the copyrigt law.

I think this is important to the example of Mr. Friedmann-Hill. Perhaps I understood this sentence wrong. please tell me.

Ulrike

Excuse me, Ulrike, what you are saying is that Ernest infringes the copyright law because he posted a work that belongs to him(!) but based on an image that is copyrighted.?!
How about the lessons from Brenda's book or other instructional books. As far as this is a learning environment ,yes, online I do not understand how you can learn or teach art and not use example images to illustrate the learning/ teaching process?
I mean you can copy a master and reproduce masterpieces and not use a lesson from an instructional art book?
The whole thing seems so ridiculous to me.I understand this for artworks, not for teaching material.Of course it's not your fault.

It sounds like the line drawings from this other book are a special case; the author charges extra money for them, and then specifically lays out the conditions under which they can be used. As the copyright holder, she has the right to do so. The Steinberg book has just this to say about the line drawings in the back



Frankly, I think the parts about posting the line drawings, or about entering your derived work in a show or selling it, should all go without saying. But I think posting "here is a drawing I did based on this book" on the Internet is within the license most authors extend to their readers.

Thank you, Mr. Friedman-Hill,

that was it, what I wanted to say. Most of my drawings/paintings are exercises from books or copied from other peoples work. I was afraid to do something wrong with posting them in the gallery. The only thing I can say is: in the future I will try to draw or paint more from my photographs or from real life. Then I have not to think about copyright law if I post a drawing/painting.

Ulrike

So I did my own tomatodrawing from real life adding a background, actually two background colors.
Here are the steps and the Roseart 72 pencils set on Stonehenge pad 5x7in. 3 1/2 hours.
1.celery,light green,grass green
2.orchid
3.red orange
4.poppy red
5.red
6.cherry red,ruby, burgundy, violet
7. royal blue
The only time I used my imagination was in the compositon of the background colors.
table: in pine green, mint, blue green, peacock green, emerald green
wall: red orange, true orange, bronze yellow, mandarin
Edit. The real life tomato was not very ripe but my husband wanted a ripe tomato so I added some royal blue.


I don't like the cast shadow neither shape, nor colors.

suggestions, comments welcome.

thanks for the lesson, Ernest.

You got a nice, rich, complex color on the tomato. I like how there are part that have a deep underlying darkness, and others that have a light orange hue.

I think the problem with the shadow is it's not well-integrated with the surface it's on; the background colors don't show up too much in the shadow. The edges of the shadow are neither sharp as they'd be with a single light, nor diffuse as they'd be with ambient light, but something in between that doesn't look physical. Also, I think the bright green should be strongly reflected by the tomato itself, too, but it's not. You really can't wait to add a background until the end.

The other main problem I think is that the stems and leaves don't cast any shadows on themselves or each other. I see the shadow of the one leaf on the tomato, which is nice, but it's not nearly dark enough, especially right where the leaf touches the tomato on either end. At the base of the stem and where the leaves come together should be really dark.

The big trick that I got from the Steinberg book is to really apply simple color theory. If you have a red tomato, you draw the shadowed parts first in dark green, then draw the red over that. If you have a green stem, you get the shadows in using a tuscan red, so the green and red combine to make a neutral shadow. You can punch the shadows up later with indigo blue or something like that, but what I'm learning is that you really have to get them in at the beginning.

And then there's the trivial stuff, like it looks as though there might have been a problem with embossed lines during sketch transfer, because there's a white halo around the tomato. This happens to me, too, constantly. Arrgh.

Thanks for the feedback, Ernest.
yes the stems need attention. I got very tired after almost 4 hours no break on this, so i will see to them tomorrow.
There was no sketch transfer or contour drawing it starts with the first jpg. posted.Yet there is one cast shadow of the stem visible at the very front part of the tomato.The rest of shadows on the tomato I do not make up as they were not in my real life pose.

here it is.

Ernest, I can't remember where I read it, but I like the idea though, of using a light box rather than a tracing paper transfer and it allows allows you to control the pressure and the embossed line problem.

I also read an article where a chap put a small fluorescent tube inside an old computer scanner that he had gutted. I thought it was a great idea - glass top - a lid that could be put down to protect it - its lighter and smaller than a lot of light boxes and now that almost everyone has 3 in 1 scanner/printer/copier units the old ones are probably piling up in 2nd hand shops.

Yep, one of these days I'm going to get a light box together. During the daytime, I use a window on the sunny side of the house, which works great -- but I get into trouble at night.

At night you can use the monitor of your computer. Just scan the picture, open it with any program, turn off the lights, put the paper on your monitor and trace the lines you want. It's not the most convenient way but it's ok for the guiding lines. (If the paper is thin, then you can see even the smallest details. But if it's thick... Then you might have a problem.)

That is a great idea! I never thiught of using the comp screen before, but I can't think why not because if the lights are off its like having a lighthouse in the corner of the room !!!

That is a cool idea!

thanks for the hints!