Brief heat wave (that would be the 90's for us), a few raucous thunderstorms, and now settling into a string of sunny breezy days in the 80's, and you have summer at last in the Panhandle of Idaho. I've been to city beach, which recently hosted a National Thistle Sailboat Regatta, and found the public marina full of boats, children splashing in the lake waters which are still quite cold, and adults strolling or soaking up the sun.
My little deck garden brings much joy, especially from the dahlia plant that kept calling to me when I was making my selections at the garden store. It's gone from one bloom at a time to several to enjoy.
I picked this one out because its blooms are not just a bright yellow, but have this reddish orange accent around each petal.
And with the warmer weather, I look for things I can do while sitting out on the deck. Perfect for enjoying an iced coffee and doing some Sketchbook Skool "homework", creating a swatch record of my many colored pencils.
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| Click on the picture for a closer look |
This sort of exercise is right up my alley because, just like with my sewing and quilting supplies, I almost enjoy the organizing and testing of my pencils more than creating something with them. Less pressure I guess and surprisingly informative. For instance, as I sorted the pencils in my black zippered holder by number, I realized I had a mixture of the basic Prismacolor pencil and their Premier line - first I'd noticed that. So I swatched them separately, then pulled more from the tin of Premiers that weren't duplicates. Not only could I instantly feel the difference between them as I made the swatches (small test from the side, small test using light pressure, and a square using normal pressure and multiple layers in two directions plus circular), in cases where I had the same color in both plain and Premier, I could see a difference in color or saturation.
I moved on to my Verithin set and got more surprises. Not only is the numbering system much different (with not much rhyme or reason to my eye), but the way that harder thinner lead laid its color across the paper was also different. It worked into the troughs and valleys of the multi-media paper pretty much in a single pass and my impression was that it would be easier to use overall. We shall see as the class progresses. In the meantime, I have this terrific reference chart and a greater insight into the pencils I own.
7 comments:
This looks like bliss to me!
Yup, pretty blissful! :-)
The yellow flower with reddish orange outlines is just beautiful! Your swatch record looks so detailed--I love it! Enjoy the summer weather! Jan in WY
Jan, that flower is a reminder to me that we must remember to slow down and look more closely at what is around us. First glance and preconceived notions miss so much. As for the swatch record, yeah, I'm pretty much all about the detail, just like with the closer look at the flower. Hope you are enjoying your summer weather too!
Doing pencil swatches while sitting on the deck sounds very relaxing. And iced coffee sounds pretty good, too. Enjoy summer now that it's here!
Oh yes, Sherrie, I did find it relaxing. And as I sipped my iced coffee I thought of you sitting on your own deck doing your equally relaxing embroidery and sipping an iced coffee as well. :-) I may love fall and winter, but I must admit, these current days of summer are pretty wonderful too!
Ah-- playing with the art supplies. That is the perfect way to get to know them -- what colors they press out on paper. That gives your brain ideas for what the possibilities are later when you want to DO something with them.
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