From Field Sketch to Final Artwork

Dwarf Larkspur (Delphinium tricorne), colored pencil.

In April I showed you the field sketch I'd done on site at Calmes Neck during a Virginia Native Plant Society (VNPS) excursion at that site. Since then I've been working on developing my field sketch into a finished work of art. I chose colored pencils for this piece because the flowers are so delicate and it seemed to me a drawing in color would show their intricate details to advantage.

 

Original field sketch in watercolor

Unfortunately, I didn't record all of the steps leading up to the finished work, but here are a few of the preliminary studies.

Pencil drawing of one Delphinium flower spike.

 

Pencil drawing of composition.

The pencil drawings above were scanned in my home multi-function printer/scanner, which is too small to show the full 12" length of the sketch. I use these scans to work on my composition, and sometimes when I see scale discrepancies, I can change the scale by printing it smaller or larger. Or I can cut up parts of the drawing and re-position them to change the composition.

Color tests.

Once I had the finished drawing in ink and was ready to transfer it to good paper, I did these color tests with my Faber Castell Polychromos pencils, to try to match the colors to my field sketch and select the kind of paper I wanted for my piece. The first row was done on Fabriano Artistico #140 Hot Pressed watercolor paper--you can see my notes on the exact pigments layered to obtain the hues, In the second row I used the same colors on Bristol 300 Vellum paper. There isn't any difference in the color, but the texture of the paper definitely changes the feel and look of the spheres.

I had originally thought that a toned paper such as Stonehenge pearl gray or Stonehenge cream might be a nice touch for this piece, but the color tests in the third row (pearl gray) and fourth row (cream) show just how much the tone of the paper influences the color--the exact same pencils were used, but the tone of the paper dulls and changes them slightly--enough to convince me that a white background was best. I found the Bristol 300 Vellum a bit too slick a surface, so the Fabriano Artistico was my final choice. 

Margaret Best's booklet "Going Green" for colored pencils has instructions for doing the color tests as spheres rather than just flat strips, and it was very useful--by modeling the spheres one develops a sense of how to modulate the color for a sense of three dimensions which one can then apply to the forms of the flowers, stems, and leaves.

That's it for today--the weather is lovely outside and my garden is calling!