Beach Scene WIP - Day 10

I began today by finishing the hands, complete with sand!  The shoe was next followed by the feather in the sand castle.  Moving along nicely today! 

After studying the illustration awhile, I decided to darken the sand and make it a bit more grainy ... more like real sand.  I accomplished this by lightly rubbing the side of the lead (used several different colors of brown) over the sandy area and the little "hills" still remaining in the paper picked up just a tiny bit of added color and provided more of a sand look. 

Next I got one of Jim's old glass ball floats to use as a reference and noticed it has all kinds of little bubbles in the glass; so I took a piece of tracing paper and laid it over the, yet uncolored, glass float and with an ink pen I drew little circles and dots on the tracing paper which left indentations on the art paper.  I then began coloring in the float with varying colors of bluish green to deep greens, after which I used a very pale green pencil to blend all the layers together and achieve a glassy effect.    I think it looks OK, what do you think?

When I began coloring in her face I started off with my Prismacolor soft core pencils and quickly noticed the lead was a bit too soft to get the detail I was seeking.  So....out comes the museum putty and I removed the first four layers I had applied.  Put those pencils back and pulled out my Prismacolor Verithin pencils and began again.  I have about four layers on her face at this point and find these pencils are providing the softness and delicacy I am looking for.

I am finished for today and am going to kick back, relax and will be studying the drawing and plan how I want to proceed tomorrow.    Then I'll have to figure out "What's for dinner?"!

Happy Day!
Karen Anne

Great times camping result in latest drawing!

This latest drawing is titled "Rosa's Flounder". We were down at the Pacific Coast in a campsite on Whalen Island the past few days and had great weather and a wonderful time. On Monday morning the camp host, Rosa, came by and showed me her catch of the day, a beautiful flounder, which inspired this drawing. The best part, however, was when she offered to filet the fish and give it to us for dinner! Cooked up in butter with pepper, season salt and garlic powder it proved to be the best tasting fish I have ever eaten! I remarked that it tasted a bit like delicate shrimp and Rosa said it was probably because flounder feed on sand shrimp. Guess I'll have to get a fishing license for my next trip to Whalen Island!

"Rosa's Flounder" 

 We spent time in the Trask River Campground in Tillamook County on Friday and Saturday and actually caught three crawdads!  We gave them back to the river the next day because three wasn't enough to cook up, boy were they happy to get back into the river!  Here are a few photos from the Trask River Campsite ....

After two days at Trask River we headed on over to Whalen Island, another Tillamook County Campground, where I set up my portable art studio and began work on "Rosa's Flounder".  Here are some of those photos ...

Another great discovery was an easy way to get hot water for washing dishes!  I took along an old roaster, filled it with water and dish soap, heated it up on the campstove and had hot water for washing!  Yes!  An added benefit is the lid keeps out bugs and pine needles.  Then I use a 5 gallon water dispenser to rinse the dishes, really makes cleaning up a breeze!

And, if you ever want the BEST camp stove that heats up water in a jiffy ... get yourself a Stansport!  It is almost as good as my domesticated restaurant gas stove at home!

We have found another Tillamook County camp ground we want to check out, it is called Kilchis River Campground.  If the weather holds up, maybe we can get over there sometime in early September, who knows, maybe we'll catch some crawdads over there???
Would be nice to catch enough for a small spiced crawdad feast with melted garlic butter!

Happy camping!
Karen Anne