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2.5 x 3.5
Polychromo on illustration board
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Uno mas. Back to my Polychromos. This was done with "Walnut Brown". Funny, I thought the Sepia color would be darker, but nope. I actually like this a lot.
Wouldn't it be funny if after all this trying out different brands I came back to my Polychromos after all?
(Remember, this was all about finding a warmer alternative to just black.)
I think I might do one or two more, then decide which way to go. I have to get started on the piece, a private commission, that inspired this search in the first place!

To see all the Yarn pieces in this series side-by-side, please go here. Or visit my ebay store to see which are available for sale.
All images and content herein are © Paula Pertile and may not be used or reproduced without permission.

2.5 x 3.5
Prismacolor! on board
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Well well well. Prismacolors, what a surprise. This was done with a French Grey 90%.
I've never liked Prismacolors all that much. They're too soft. This one broke twice while I was doing this piece (it broke in the sharpener) and I ended up using almost one whole pencil just on this little illustration. I mean, c'mon.
I've come to the conclusion that nothing on earth will ever 'do it' for me like my Polychromos, but I'm still glad to know what's out there.
I do like this color though for a warmer alternative to black.

And I don't know what this bondage thing is I have going on. I don't think I'll analyze it.

To see all the Yarn pieces in this series side-by-side, please go here. Or visit my ebay store to see which are available for sale.
All images and content herein are © Paula Pertile and may not be used or reproduced without permission.

2.5 x 3.5
Derwent Coloursoft on board
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I like this! This is Coloursoft's "brown black" color. Its almost as soft as the Derwent Drawing pencil, but noooooot quiiiiite. Close though.
They're still not Polychromos, but they're pretty good.
And I like this color. I want to do a couple more then do a final "side by side" thing to compare.

I sure wish I had my CPSA lightfast book so I'd know which ones were lightfast. If anyone who does know wants to tell me, I'm all ears (thanks to Katherine I already know the Poly black is good, which is a relief). I have a feeling most or all of these muted colors will be OK. Notice though I'm not testing Graphitints because somewhere I heard they were fugitive. Again, if anyone knows for sure and feels like sharing...

To see all the Yarn pieces in this series side-by-side, please go here. Or visit my ebay store to see which are available for sale.
All images and content herein are © Paula Pertile and may not be used or reproduced without permission.

SOLD


2.5 x 3.5
Polychromo pencil on board

I'm back to my Polychromos! That last one, the Cretacolor, just irked me enough that I had to go back to my faves. You know how when you go on vacation and sleep in hotels and try all new things, then you come home and sleep in your own bed and go "Ahhhhhhh"...well that's how my Polychromos feel to me.

I did this with just the Dark Sepia one.
You can hardly tell that's a pear underneath all that yarn, but yep, its there.

So check this out: (click it to make it bigger)


Look at how greenish the Polychromo sepia looks compared to the others!
My favorite "non black" here is the Chocolate Derwent Drawing pencil, by far.
I do like the Cretacolor Dark Sepia COLOR, but hate working with the pencil.
My favorite pencils to work with are still the Polychromos, but I can deal with the Derwent.

There's one more I want to try before the jury is all in. I need to do some Coloursofts and see what I can do with those, then I'll make my decision.

To see all the Yarn pieces in this series side-by-side, please go here. Or visit my ebay store to see which are available for sale.
All images and content herein are © Paula Pertile and may not be used or reproduced without permission.

2.5 x 3.5
Cretacolor pencil on illustration board
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Well, like the color, don't like the pencil.

Pictured here is a light sepia (from their website), but I used Dark Sepia.
The Cretacolors are charcoal, and charcoal is DRY DRY DRY. I wasn't able to achieve the subtlety I usually do, or at least it was way too difficult. The pencil felt scratchy on the board, which drove me NUTS. Then it broke once in the sharpener and I had to do the Heimlich on the thing to get it out.

I don't want to bad-mouth these pencils. I think they're fine quality and would be just perfect for some other application. Like shading, blending, etc. Some of these you can even add water to.
But for what I do, with my grainy detailed thing, no. I won't be using these again.
Harumph!

I'm sort of cranky, can you tell? I have all sorts of cool projects going, and can't talk about or show any of them. Then the ones I could show, aren't really bloggy type things. So I'm super busy, but in a "too many things on my mind at once" kind of way.

In better news, today is the first day here of no more "Bleakitude" (to quote John Nez). The sun was out this morning, the plants were happy, my cats were basking on the back deck, and the birdies were chirping it up. That's what made me feel like drawing a plant.

I wish I could just sit and take tea on the lawn, or work my needlepoint by a sunny window, or take a long walk through the woods to the neighbor's estate for a chat and dinner. (Can you tell I watched Pride and Prejudice last night?)

Ah well, back to the 21st century and my drawing table.

To see all the Yarn pieces in this series side-by-side, please go here. Or visit my ebay store to see which are available for sale.
All images and content herein are © Paula Pertile and may not be used or reproduced without permission.

2.5 x 3.5
Graphitints and Polychromos on illustration board
ebay auction

There's a stand of Italian Cypress tress in the yard behind me. All Winter I've been watching them bend and sway in the wind. Its kind of mesmerizing some days, others its scary. So anyways, I finally decided to use them as inspiration for a yarn piece.

I started with Graphitints then filled in more with Polychromos. I like using the two together.

This last week I didn't get much done. Well, I did, but it was nothing I could blog about. And I didn't have time to do any yarn. Or anything else for myself. I was cranky!

Next up is a series of tests about "black and white", or more specifically, "monochromatic" pieces, done with different greys, sepias, blacks etc. I'm doing a piece that will be in black and white, but want to warm it up some. I'm not sure I want to use sepia. I know the Polychromo "soft blacks" are impossible to find now, so that's out. I love my usual Polychromo regular black (like the yarn in the last post), but its a very cold black. I just want to explore some options. So hopefully in the next couple of days I'll have something to show.
Stay tuned!

To see all the Yarn pieces in this series side-by-side, please go here. Or visit my ebay store to see which are available for sale.
All images and content herein are © Paula Pertile and may not be used or reproduced without permission.

Graphitints AND Coloursofts on illustration board
on ebay

I was having one of those days.
A friend of the family died a couple of days ago, and it got me thinking about life and death and all that good stuff, hence the title. Sometimes it all just seems surreal, doesn't it? Like, what are we doing here, anyway? And what's it all mean?

Plus, its raining raining, this endless gloomy heavy rain and grey sky.

I dunno, this is just what came out today. I actually thought "I feel like doing a yarn piece", and got out my Graphitints and Coloursofts and tried using them together.
I started with brown Coloursoft, then did a Grey Graphitint over the whole thing, then added color, then toned it back down, then did white over it all, then I kind of lost track.

It was very therapeutic though, and I kinda like the result. I managed to get some kind of deep jewel tones, which isn't what I was going for, but that's OK, I like deep jewel tones.

~~~~~~~
I'm working on a COOL private commission, wish I could share. Maybe I can, I'll ask. Maybe not though, which I will understand. Its not yarn! ha ha Kind of a children's book thing. Fun fun fun.

~~~~~~
Remember the doll house I gave my mom for Christmas? Well, she loves that thing to death. Today we went online (well, I went online and she sat in a chair and watched) and we found some doll house sites and she ordered...get this...toilet paper. TOILET PAPER. Little teeny tiny rolls of Scott toilet tissue. And a newspaper and a grandfather clock.

~~~~~~~
And now I will leave you with this.
Cher is singing. Yes, that Cher.
Burt Bacharach and Hal David did the music.
Remember when Michael Caine looked like this?


To see all the Yarn pieces in this series side-by-side, please go here. Or visit my ebay store to see which are available for sale.
All images and content herein are © Paula Pertile and may not be used or reproduced without permission.

Author: Colin Thompson
Illustrator: Colin Thompson
Published: Random House UK (on JOMB)
ISBN: 0091768179 Amazon.ca Amazon.com

Spellbindingly surreal illustrations contrast with matter-of-fact narrative to relay this thought provoking story of perspective, choice and inter-generational connection: “All you have to do is keep your dreams”.

Other books mentioned:

• Fly, Eagle, Fly
• I Can Hear the Sun
• Tudley Didn’t Know
• Gifts

More books about flying:

• Isla
• Camilla’s New Hairdo
• Cat & Canary

Piano Piano by Davide Cali, illustrated by Éric Heliot, Charlesbridge, 2007
First published in France in 2005

When Charlesbridge offered me a chance to see some books from their catalog I was immediately drawn to the cover of Piano Piano. Heliot's strong opening image of a kid running down a keyboard just, well, struck a chord.

Marcolino practices the piano for several minutes a day. He would rather be doing ANYTHING else than playing the piano. When his mother tells him of her own missed opportunity of becoming a grand pianist, Marcolino practices for her. A visit with his grandfather reveals an interesting truth about his mother's piano dreams and helps him find the musical instrument that really defines him.

Héliot's illustrations give the story the perfect comic touch. His seemingly simple drawings convey the character's emotions perfectly. Marcolino's face as he sits at the piano is very familiar.

This story brought back such memories of my own childhood piano lessons and adult regrets of wishing I had practiced more. It also evoked parental memories of herding my own children back to the piano bench.

This book is for kids who are looking for their own musical instrument and parents who express their own dreams through their children.

by Carol Foskett Cordsen illustrated by Douglas B. Jones Puffin paperback 2007 Hearkening back to another era, this picture book takes a warm-n-fuzzy look at a day in the life of the old fashioned door-to-door milkman. Told in terse clip-clop rhymes we follow Mr. Plimpton as he readies for and makes his daily deliveries in a town straight out of Robert McCloskey's Centerberg. It begins with

Have been working on the marketing over the last few days, sending emails with my press release to a number of Autism Societies across the country, and generating an address labels page for others. It's amazing how many there are; I am up to only page six of more than twenty pages in a google search. I figure if I do ten a day, I might finish in a month or two.

The good thing is that I have had a few responses, too, and have sent out a few books for review.

In addition, I have joined some listserves and introduced myself, which has generated a good deal of traffic on my website.

And from one of the listserves, I received the inspiration to write an article about grandparenting a child with autism, in response to a question asked about how to do that. So I have started working on that.

Then, I was reading my new SCBWI Bulletin yesterday, and found a publisher looking for books with the same criteria as the first one I wrote, which does not yet have a home...so of course, I sat right down and submitted it.

The weather here is warm, windy and wet. Barry is passing through...don't know the name of the first storm...I seemed to have missed that one. But the rain is what we need, so welcome, Barry.