The gift of artistic creativity as an enduring personal trait is dependent on at least two different factors. Firstly, there must be an urge, drive or motivation to create something new, and secondly, there must be talent to carry out and materialize this creative urge.

The many individuals who possess only one of these factors may be taken as proof that we are dealing with two different and, at times, unrelated abilities. There are many people who, though possessing an immense urge to create in the various fields of art, never succeed, because they lack the necessary talent. Others, on the other hand, although considerably gifted and with a specific talent in some art, never desire or attempt to create something original of their own.

I will be developing this topic over the next few months, so stay tuned.

 

Over at my hangout they run a weekly drawing challenge. It's a lot of fun and easy because you just pick from a list of photos provided by the host and draw. No worries about choosing a subject or copyright because all the photos are the property of the host. This week I chose to draw a reference photo of a bowl of apricots on a table.

The drawing took around 5 hours to draw.
I used Caran d'Arche color pencils on 260gsm, 9x12 inch, smooth bristol.

As I mentioned in another post, I'm new to color pencil and I find it amazing how many pencils you need to produce a drawing like this. I'm a bit pencil poor so I have to do a lot of layering with different colors. Actually experimenting with colors is the most interesting part. I used 11 colors to produce this drawing.

• The bowl - Gray, light olive, emerald green, white
• The apricots - Orange, ocre (light brown), yellow, red, brown. black
• I blended with the white pencil.

 

 

 

D

ecoration time! I wanted to work on using color pencils and decided that I could use a little color on my studio walls. So I searched high and low for an idea that wouldn't take me too long but would be a good fit for an artist's studio.

I pulled out a piece of A3 bristol paper a few color pencils and this is what I came up with. It was fun and took me about 5 hours to draw. My only regret is that I didn't spend enough time on the cast shadows. Any way it looks pretty cool hanging on the wall.

O

ver at my hangout (Drawspace) one of the members started a thread about drawing with your weak hand. In my case I'm right handed therefore my weak hand is my left hand. I do not hold my pencil the same way I do when drawing or writing. When drawing I hold the pencil near the top and use the side of my hand and my small finger to stabilize my movements. Large free flowing movements are coming from the shoulder so there is no real difference between the right and the left. It's just a question of practice to feel comfortable. On the other hand, no pun intended, writing requires that I change the way I hold the pencil and the technique used to create the letters. If I were to write left handed it would look awful.

Sure when you're not doing this every day it is quite difficult but overall the technique is the same. I find that the hardest part is switching everything around. Like moving the light to my right and adjusting my body position to adapt to the left side as I draw.

I drew this example drawing to illustrate. The drawing I did with my right hand took around 15 minutes where as the drawing with my left hand took 45 minutes.