MOVING FORWARD: Lecia and Adrianne at Sauvies Island

First I have to say that this photo doesn't show the entire piece, but in order to get the details to show, I had to leave out part of the sky.  (I purposely avoided cutting the landscape in half in the actual drawing).
This last Tuesday I underwent surgery to repair my hernia.  I knew I would have the opportunity to get a fair amount of drawing and painting done.  So I took on another watercolor on Wednesday. It did not go well.  I was disappointed in my effort,  so much so that I didn't even want to post it.  This gave me cause to evaluate my ability to construct and execute paintings satisfactorily.  So on Friday I looked up a photo I had been wanting to paint from the moment I saw it. ...The photo for this drawingwas taken by my daughter Grace at Sauvies Island last year.  Grace has been able to capture some great scenes on camera, and I think this is one of her best.  In fact, both of my daughters have a very good eye for photography and I have added some of their photos to my list of potential pieces. (I am going to use a clause in my personal creative contract here that allows me to use anything my immediate family has photographed as  reference material). anyway...
I decided to literally go back to the drawing board in order to re-establish my  fundamentals. The first effort was Charlie Neal.  A good start, but not entirely satisfactory.  And now about this drawing.


1. Before I began this drawing,  I knew that patience was going to be a key factor.  I am using 4 different pencils on my drawings now. 2H, 2B, 4H, and HB instead of whatever I find handy.. (this is known as the 5 pencil method, more on that in later posts). The biggest challenge was getting Adriannes right leg correct. The drawing would've  been a failure  had I not gone over a third time to get it just right.  I didn't use tracing paper, only a compass and ruler to get the dimension and angle. The eye has a tendency to see what should be there instead of what really is there. Big challenge was both hand and arm positions.  If the point of reference is off, the whole drawing is off.

I was well on my way to success until I realized the position and dimension of the leg /foot was slightly askew.

 As you can see in the snapshot, I did not establish the correct leg position until after I began filling out the forms at the top. A risky move that could have been disastrous.  Lucky for me, I was using very light strokes, so erasing didn't leave indentations or smudges where the leg had been. After this, I resumed filling in the figures.  Sometimes I have to prove to myself that the key components of a drawing are going to work before I fully commit to the composition. Though I had  the left figure and horizon lines sketched in, I had no road or background penciled in. Another risk I was willing to take. This did cause a bit of a problem later, when I got off center with the background .
2.  As I mentioned, I used very light strokes on the drawing to fill in the shadows.  This is very time consuming, but it helps immensely in getting the correct values since the darks appear in graduations.

I snapped this photo after I had finished the leg and most of the shirt (photo is off kilter)

.   3.  Another challenge was Adrianne's shirt.  Very tedious, but it turned out okay.

4.  Finally after many hours of shading,  I was able to add the background.  It was difficult to resist rushing this as well.  This is the longest I have spent on a drawing that I can remember, but I knew it needed to be consistent, so I persevered.
I can honestly say after looking at this drawing that I am satisfied with it.  I will probably continue to fill in some spots in the road to give it more depth, and I might work in some of the light clouds that were visible in the original photo.

I had one heck of a time photographing this drawing.  The sky is actually still completely white in the drawing, and there is more of it.