Sunday, October 10, 2010

Quick Draw II - Pumpkin

We took a car trip to Kansas from North Carolina a couple of weeks ago and I took the small Conte sketch kit I bought at Jerry's.  I also took some of the pastel paper that I don't particularly like as I thought it would be good enough to play on.  It was really difficult to paint in the car but I did a series of quick sketches of things out the window or from my imagination or, as this drawing, a combination.

We saw countless fresh air markets and fields displaying pumpkins for sale.  I decided to take advantage of the orange Tiziano paper to do this quick sketch of a pumpkin. The little Conte pastel kit has 12 crayons in good, basic colors, a sanguine and a black Conte pencil and a charcoal pencil, a kneaded eraser and a couple of tortillions for blending.  It's perfect for painting on the go as it has a lot of stuff in a small space.  I wish it were in a tin of some kind though as I had to put stretch wrap around the plastic base to hold everything in.  Maybe I can find a tin of the right size one of these days.

It was fun and beneficial to do these little sketches - they not only saved me from total boredom riding hour after hour, I got to practice trees and rocks and other things that I normally can't get quite right in pastel.

5 comments:

Teresa said...

This is a great pumpkin, Jan!! It's just right... not overdone, enough detail. Glad you're doing the quickies... aren't they fun? :-)

Sue Clinker said...

I'm very impressed Jan :o)

It would be impossible to do any sort of drawing/painting in a car on English roads .... if they aren't full of potholes (result of snow/frost last Winter) the local councils put 'traffic calming' measure in - usually what we call speed humps - raised sections of road about 4" high at regular intervals to discourage speeding (so car and contents get severely jolted which does no good at all for tempers or car tyres)!!

I've heard before that Tiziano isn't much liked (I think Kay from Pett Paintings bought some and had difficulty with it) ...one to be avoided then?

Unknown said...

WOW Jan ...you did this on the move.

Great job.
Hope you had a good trip.

Christine Perry | Graphite Art said...

That's a cute little pumpkin, Jan. Looks like you are having so much fun. ;-)

Jan said...

Thanks, everyone!

Yes, Teresa, it was fun and kept me from being too bored.

Sue, it would be difficult on our country roads but we were traveling on the interstate most of the time which was relatively smooth.

I definitely think Tiziano is to be avoided! It won't hold more than a layer or two of pastel and even then, there are areas that aren't covered. It might be ok for colored pencil but I wouldn't use it. I guess it might be good for pastel if you wanted a lot of broken color areas with the paper color showing through.

Dors, we had a nice trip - it was just too long and too much driving!

Thanks Christine! I think these little doodles are great stress busters!