Today was MLK day, and I had the day off from work.  My wife and I had a lunch date at Canteen 900, where I had a giant mug of hot chocolate and a multigrain turkey and brie sandwich.  Canteen 900 is located in a very artsy, eclectic building, which is very cool to walk around and just explore.  One of the things you'll find in your explorations is Lizza Studios, and it's owner, Bob Lizza.  Bob has been doing my scans and prints for years.  His studio has an incredible, one of a kind scanner which does ultra high resolution reproductions.  People literally come from around the world for Lizza's services - Bob has even done work for the Vatican.  So, I'm incredibly fortunate to have his studio located 15 minutes from my house. I was expecting to drop off the art, then come back for a few proofs in a week or so.  To my surprise, Bob asked if I was free today and said "I can get it done this afternoon."  Awesome! I took off for a bit, hit a Barnes and Noble nearby and bought a few cute books for Emma, then returned an hour later.  The proof was printed and waiting.  I had to stare at it for a few minutes before finding the slightest tweak, then Bob opened up Photoshop and made it quickly, and another proof churned off the printer.  It was a perfect match.

Here's a little piece of detail of a small piece of blanket fold from the full size scan:

Bob burned a DVD of the full sized image (400 MB @ 450 dpi), and I'll resize that image to the CPSA's specifications and use it as my entry for this year's show.  The deadline for entry is always at the end of March, and it's nice this year to have everything wrapped up early.  Now, time to start a new piece!

After a few months of work I put the final coat of fixative on my work in progress, changing it to a completed piece.  Final dimensions are 19" H x 28.75" W, Caran d'ache Luminance and Prismacolor colored pencils on Black Canson Mi-Teintes Touch paper.  The work's title is "Adrift". Next step is to get a high resolution scan completed by Lizza Studios.

Today I put another 7 hours of work into my current project. I was surprised yesterday how quickly I went through my first few pencils. I'm used to the sanded papers really devouring my pencils, but I had somewhat underestimated the usage of the bedspread colors, and in no time I was down to pencil stubs. In fairness, the paper width is 28.75″, and the same four colors have been used constantly. Since they are Caran d'ache Luminance, no one sells them open stock locally, so I had to order them from Dick Blick. This also meant that, today, when I used up my last stroke of blue, I needed to switch gears and focus on a different part of the picture until my order arrives. I decided to block in the base colors for the fleshtones:

One of the other quirks of being home today is that it was just me and the cat, Iggly. There's a series of cartoons called "Simon's Cat" that any cat owner will love, and this one sums up trying to do artwork with a cat:

[embed]http://youtu.be/uOHvZjiDANg[/embed]

A while ago I wrote a post about selecting a palette for my next piece, which will be completed on a full sized sheet of Canon Mi-Teintes Touch black paper using Caran d'ache Luminance pencils.  The palette looks like this:

I'd previously transferred the line drawing and had the picture mounted on my drawing board ready to go.  Today I got a few hours to put pigment to paper.  Usually I work all areas of a piece at once, progressing through basic colors and shapes to more refined details, saving elements like patterns or lace for last.  For this piece, though, nearly the entire work is a pattern, so I am working the pattern as I go along, section by section.  Non-pattern areas are getting basic value and colors blocked in at this stage, and once I have the entire piece blocked in I will begin refining and building up the colors layers.

The pattern is a wonderful challenge, along with all of the fabric folds, but it's also a bit like drawing hair: what's important is the direction and framework be in place; the rest I can draw in during refinement.  The shadow areas, for example, are single lines on bare black paper.  The highlight areas are fairly refined, but this is a focus area which will influence value choices for the figure, so I worked ahead on this section some to figure out some color and value combos.