Friday, December 14, 2007

Charcoal Portrait...and Travel

Lilly, 8x10, charcoal

I've been out of town this week, travelling for business. I thought I should bring along a few portrait commissions just in case I was inspired in my hotel room. The one above, of course, is a really bad picture, taken from my phone. It's a smaller one, 8x10 and was done fairly quickly. It is charcoal, so the photograph should just be black and white (no blue in real life!). Once I return home, I will prop it up and look at it again, and tweak it before giving it to the client.
I was hoping to return home yesterday, but I was among the many many people affected by the winter storm. I was trying to fly out of Providence Rhode Island. The snow is a gorgeous site for us not used to seeing it! Being from North Carolina, we see more ice than snow, and even the ice is rare...To see the snow coming down so quickly, I had mixed feelings. It was beautiful and exciting, but I was at the airport hoping to fly out. A flight that was supposed to leave at 1:30 was delayed many times and was eventually cancelled (after being boarded and waiting for the plane to de-ice twice). I was frustrated at first, but my company has a wonderful travel department that helped me with my flight and hotel. Can I say I love the Hilton? It's my favorite hotel (especially when having to stay overnight due to cancelled flights). The beds are soft, the duvet covers are silky, warm and light. My favorite part was that they had HGTV! This has become a rarity in the hotels I've stayed in. The employees at the hotel were very nice, and I'm it was a struggle with so many stranded people staying there.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Two Boys

9x10, Strathmore Charcoal Paper

I've been fascinated recently with pastels and how they glow with any subject. I purchased a small set of Nupastels months ago and never worked with them until tonight. On a whim, I decided to open them up. I took some Strathmore charcoal paper (md beige tint), a photo I tweaked in Paint Shop Pro and just started to sketch it out on the paper. There was no planning, so I'm sure the more I look at the piece, the more unstatisfied I will be...it's a work in progress, and I'll probably fix the colors, the backgound, blend a little, etc. It's my first try with pastels, so I'm really just playing around with it.
It's another bad photo, but what can I say? I didn't start doing this until 8 tonight when our kids were watching "Santa Claus is Coming to Town".