Week 52: "52 Weeks of Peace"

As the “52 Weeks of Peace” series comes to its inevitable end, it’s my hope that the spirit of mindful peace will carry on long after the last posting. I hope you’ll find peace in unexpected places ~ and nurture its presence. I hope you’ll seek it, recognize it, allow it, and share it. There’s great power there… beginning with you, me, our families and friends. It doesn’t have to be a movement you join; more importantly, it’s a movement you feel within.

Here’s to planting, growing and tending gardens of peace ~ within ourselves as well as “out there”.

Thanks for sharing this journey together. Cheers all!

PS: Because the series started on September 1st, there will be a “bonus” posting next week.

PSS: Remember, all 52 Weeks are posted here!

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Week 40: "52 Weeks of Peace"

“Stairways to Peace”

The path to peace is not often straight. Sometimes you have to climb around, zig and zag, twist and turn; maybe even go upside down for a while. But however you arrive, the door is welcoming… and patiently waiting to be opened.

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Work in Progress

Here’s a glimpse of a work-in-progress. When the time is right (and client approved), the final piece will be unveiled ~ for now, I thought that in this digital world, some good old-fashioned pencil work might be refreshing. :  )

pencil drawing in progress / © p. saxton

pencil drawing developed and incorporated with oil painting / © p. saxton

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More Milton: On Drawing and Thinking

This is wonderful. The way he articulates the connection between seeing and thinking touches on the very essence of what every illustrator has probably felt at some point – myself included.

In this short video by C. Coy, designer Milton Glaser draws a picture of Shakespeare while talking about the ways that drawing helps him think and perceive: “for me, drawing has always been a primary way of encountering reality.”

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Drawing Tips: Colored Pencil

Colored pencils are one of my favorite mediums. They’re also one of the most unforgiving, as a friend recently discovered.

My friend’s son, a budding artist, had apparently drawn an amazing picture, then decided to color it in with colored pencils. But he “hated what he did” and wanted to erase the color. She asked me if there were an amazing eraser out there that would solve the problem – or if he was doomed to start over.

My short answer was that there is no “amazing eraser” for colored pencil, and that yes, he was most likely doomed.

So maybe you too have decided to try illustrating with colored pencils. You’ve got your base drawing down and now you’re coloring away, shading, blending, watching the colors come to life. Time passes without notice.

Then in one dreaded moment, you realize you’ve gone too far. You reach for your eraser. You erase…. nothing happens. You try again. You curse. Maybe you scream. But you pull yourself together, because you think, ha! – there’s gotta be a solution. It’s just pencil, after all.

Not to dash your hopes, but here’s the harsh reality: Unless you’ve used your colored pencil v-e-r-y lightly (in which case you haven’t gone too far, so there’s been no cause for dread), you – just like my friend’s son – are probably, almost definitely, doomed to begin again.

There are people who use an electric eraser, or an eraser that sharpens like a pencil, but these take practice (otherwise they smear or eat the paper), are meant for small areas, and can be more frustrating than starting over. White artist erasers or gray putty erasers, which I personally love for regular pencil, don’t do the trick with colored pencils, only taking off slight upper layers of shading.

Aside from starting over, another option is to turn your mistake into something else – sometimes a mistake offers a new way to think about your picture. But once you’ve laid down a bunch of color, erasing is not a viable option.

The real lesson here of course, is about going slowly…. before it’s too late to go back!  And that making a sketch first (even a rough one) to test out the color is a real smart thing to do.

You can also lay a piece of tissue paper over the drawing and color over it (on the tissue paper), to get an idea of how the color might look – just keep in mind that the texture of the tracing paper creates a different feel, and that colored pencils will behave differently on drawing paper. But this simple step can let you know whether you want to forge ahead with color at all.

And like anything else, the more practiced you become, the more skilled and confident you’ll be, and those mistakes won’t be such a concern.

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