Playing with Pencils - Graphite Granny Smiths

Late last night, while bingeing (see ** below) on Mad Men (AMC is running a marathon leading up to Sunday night's series finale), I also spent a little time sketching.  I wanted to work on basic shapes, so I chose a Granny Smith apple and worked from photos taken from different perspectives. 

I used a 4H Staedtler Mars Lumograph graphite pencil for most of the sketch, then used a B to add just a bit of shading and to make the sketch dark enough to scan.  A 4H pencil is pretty "hard" and therefore doesn't make a really dark sketch.

** Regarding the spelling of bingeing: the Blogger spell-check doesn't like that "e" in there.  But according to most dictionaries, it is an acceptable spelling.  As a linguist, I think you need that "e" in there to keep the "g" soft, that is, pronounced like a "j."  After all, I'm not bing-cherry-ing on Mad Men, if you follow where I've drifted (wink).

Hope you're having a great day!

Bleeding Hearts - ATC

I don't recall what made me think of bleeding hearts this weekend; perhaps the excitement of seeing all of our spring flowers poking out of the ground.  I've never had a bleeding heart plant, but they are beautiful so I decided to make them the subject of a practice sketch and then an ATC.

I found a photograph to use as a guide and made a light sketch using a Staedtler Lumograph drawing pencil.  After a few adjustments, I added Derwent watercolor pencils.  Because my sketch book is not watercolor paper, the pencils don't really work as they should.  But this step allows me to play around with the colors and to refine the drawing.  Just for kicks, I also tested a new Staedtler pigment liner sketch pen on this page.

Based on my sketch, I transferred part of the design to a piece of Bristol paper to create this ATC.  Again I used my Derwent watercolor pencils and a very fine (0.05) Staedtler sketch pen.  I'm really happy with how this turned out.  And it makes me want to get a bleeding heart plant!

I hope you had a grand weekend!  Thanks for popping by my blog.