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So here's a whole little piece done with the Polychromo plus baby oil technique.

Its 6 x 6 on Stonehenge paper. The apricots were done with layers of pencil, oil, pencil, oil and more pencil. The background is just pencil, and you can see the grain more.


I did these in natural light, set on a paper towel on my drawing table. The light changed as I worked on these throughout the afternoon, which always drives me nuts. So I had to finish up before they looked completely different than they did when I started!

I did notice that when I put the drawing up against a window, I was able to see a 'halo' of oil around the shapes of the apricots. It certainly doesn't show when the art is not backlit. And the halo didn't come through on the scanner. So we'll see if, over time, anything changes.

I should add that before this piece, I made an attempt with the same composition on a square Ampersand art board ~ a canvas one, made for oil and acrylic. First I applied a layer of pencil, scritch scritch scritch over the whole thing which just rested on the surface and looked really ugly. But I kept going. I then brushed on some oil, and all it did was fill the tooth of the canvas up with oil, pretty much. It didn't absorb it, and I just had a layer of oil floating on top of canvas grained pencil, and it was not pretty. So I wiped it all off with a cloth and it left a light stained impression of the drawing. We'll put that in the "save for another project" pile.

I like working like this. I think it does save a wee bit of time, and mostly I like how it looks.
Next up ~ plums, maybe?

This is an amazing toothpick sculpture of San Francisco and surrounding areas.
(It won Best of Show in the fair last year ~ the newspaper is running this story today, not sure why, but no matter.)



Talk about patience! It took him 40 years to make this! And the accompanying article in the newspaper says he's been offered as much as $40,000 for it, but he won't sell it. Good for him.

I'd love to be this obsessed with something creative. But I think I'd want to be gettin' paid for it.

I'm working on a bunch of stuff right now; some knitting, and some tests with colored pencils. I'm thinking "Fall" for my knitting already. I'm finally getting smart, instead of waiting until October. (I should also be thinking about Christmas ~ and it isn't even the first day of Summer yet!)

As for the colored pencils ~ it involves a bottle of baby oil. And that's all I'll say for now. I'll leave you wondering...