Iris

So to elevate my grooves from the graphite I did this contour in color pencils that correspond to the underpainting. If you are interested in this technique...
http://www.amazon.com/Masterful-Color-Vibrant-Colored-Paintings/dp/1581809573

Underpainting in Black Grape and Black Cherry.

Adding some color.

Turning the Iris Blue.  This step was hard for me because I think of Iris's as Purple but the finished blues will look great.

Red Barn

Okay this isn't really art but I did paint Saturday! This is me on scaffold my dad set up so I could paint "safely" This is the "Barn" on dad's property. My brothers, Sister-in-law, Dad and Step mother had a day of bonding and painting.

Yellow Pear w/ Grapes

Darkening the color again.

Defining the fruit, shadow and highlights.

Saturating the paper with color.

Burnished and done!  Well I didn't like this as much as the tomato. I learned many things not to do which is as much of the point with these exercises as how to do the techniques. Mostly I want to learn more about color which I just love here.  You can still see the grooves the graphite made I just couldn't fill in. I know how to fix that so stay tuned for that in the next exercise.

Yellow Pear w/ Grapes

It's an omen! The exercise started off bad. I wasn't able to find all the colors listed for this project.  They are lightfast prismacolors and I guess I can only find them online.  SOOO I'm improvising.

Getting some shadow depth here. This is the second drawing I did of this pic.  The first I used a hard lead pencil and it put grooves in the paper Then the colored pencil doesn't want to fill in the small grooves.

Even though I redrew and used a VERY light hand I still got the grooves!  Not sure if it's the paper change from the tomato pic. That was done on W/C paper this on bristol vellum or the hard lead.  I decided not to redo but to learn something and see if I can fill it in. (Enlarge and you can see it)

Another thing I learned was the directions said to use a Verithin white pencil to burnish the reflections on the grapes.  Well I don't like this method at all! You get close with the color and it gets in the white and creates a bad effect. See you when I get the next four steps done.

Tomato

Step 5  This step has Pumpkin Orange and Raspberry.

Step 6  I like the look of the transparency of the color here.  I'd probably have stopped at this point.

Step 7  This step fills in every bit of white paper.  You loose the transparency here.   Slate grey was layered over the table shadow. I immediately regretted this even though it's in the directions.

Finished!  I can't take credit for it but I think it turned out awesome.  In person it looks like an acrylic sticker on the paper. I didn't pay attention to the form of my tomato in the beginning because I was more interested in learning the color. Got to remember to do that next time.  I'm not sure how I'm going to be able to transfer these techniques into my own work yet. 23 colors were used in total! I think I need more practice. Time to turn the page and see my next exercise.

Tomato

I got a new book "Masterful Color" vibrant colored pencil paintings layer by layer by Arlene Steinberg.
As a how to book I really like it so I'm doing some of the exercises in it.  The first is this tomato.  No it's not a green tomato. In the end it will be red.  The idea is using complementary colors for the shadow areas. This has several greens. Dar, Green, Celadon Green, and Jade Green.  In the steam there is Inigo Blue and Black Cherry and the shadow has Dioxazine Purple Hue with Greyed lavender.

Now I've layered Black Cherry all over the Greens and table shadow. Also some Yellow Ochre in the shadow.

Now It's supposed to start turning red. Tuscan Red is layered on the Black cherry and Black Cherry and Slate Grey in the shadow. Plus a little Olive Green in the steam.

Getting some highlights in with Jasmine and more Yellow Ochre in the shadow. Now a little more red with Raspberry over the Tuscan Red. Stay tuned for the next 4 steps! (Don't forget to double click the pic to see enlarged)