Swaney Road Barn (Buckeye Red White & Blue) WIP

Hello everyone. Been a while since I updated the work on the Swaney Road Barn drawing. I have been working way too much with my day job. In this update you can see that I have moved through the right side of the Barn and roof area. I have chosen to put a tin roof on the barn and add the horse and cart wind directional on top. I finished the stone corner and then continued the barn siding work to complete the long side of the barn. Mostly line work here except for the layering work in the roof. Once I completed the barn I went right into the grass work and brought it down to the fence line where I worked that area.

The next will be the final posting of the finished drawing and I will discuss some of the foliage and weed work in the fence line.

WIP 4 SWANEY RD. Barn (Buckeye Red, White & Blue)

Thanks for coming back and following along with this one. It is fun to watch how a drawing develops and this one is full of fun. The drawing is completed and on my gallery pages for sale but, it is the Work In Progress posting that help to bring a drawing to life for the viewer. Other artists tell me that they like to see how another artist develops a piece and this is one of those ways to see the work as it progresses. I always enjoy seeing other artist at work.

Well, now that the big secret is out as to what is going on the facing side of this barn to make it so special, it was time to get back to the work at hand. The weeds and mid-ground grass work. I love weeds in my drawings and especially this one as they have the front and center stage this time. Many times they are in the mid or distant areas of the drawings I do but, this time they are close up. You can get a good look at them by clicking on the two images I have posted this time. The weeds are made up of Thistles, Fox Tail and Golden Rod as well as some tall grasses. These can be mixed in what ever way you decide. I try not to get to regular on my spacing or the number of each. Nature doesn't do this so neither do I.

The mid ground grass work was all done by individual pen stroke with my fine point pen. While the weeds in the fence row were done with both medium and fine point pens. The weeds were drawn in by line work and then some over-lapping tone layers to give them depth and dimension. The grass work as I said, was done one stroke at a time. I pay close attention to the contour of the ground and the distance between the weeds and the facing side of the barn. The strokes are short vertical lines. The lines get longer as they get closer to the viewer. I tend to start the grass work in the lower left corner of the area that I want to cover and work to the upper right. I don't work a row across the page and then come back like a type writer would. That gives a manufactured line look to your grass. Again, nature doesn't do that so neither do I. Pay close attention to what you see in nature and try to stay close to it in what and how you render natural areas in your work.

Well, that's about all for now. If you have any questions for me about any specific techniques or any part in the drawing please feel free to drop me an email directly to vince@rural-route-one.com and I will answer them as quickly as I can.

Cheers!

WIP 3 Swaney Road Barn

As you can see, I have done the work on the facing side of the barn that I had kept a secret till now. This barn drawing is different from any other that I have done. It is the first time that I have put color Ball Point Pen work in my drawings. I wanted to do this to show my love for the flag and my country. I am a disabled veteran and very proud of my service. I have painted, if you will, this flag on the only barn I own. If I had a large barn like this, I would by the paint and paint one on the side of it. One interesting note about the flag image is that I took the reference photo of this flag during my attendance at the OSU football game at "The Shoe" in Columbus, Ohio during the home game against Wisconsin. It was my first time in the stadium for a game. I was impressed ! The most beautiful sight for me that day was the huge American flag flying at the end of the stadium. It was perfect. I knew then that it would be my model for the barn drawing. The flag is done in light layers of red and blue ink while the white areas are negative work. I also finished the facing siding of the barn as well as put in the stone corner around the window of the barn. If you look in front of the corner you will see that I have put in the apple ladder, the paint cans and artists tool box in the mid-ground to show that the artist had just finished his work and as it were, has stepped out in front to admire the work before picking up his tools. If you click on the image you can see a closer view of this image. I have also included a close-up crop of the paint cans for you to see. Thanks for following along with me on this one...Keep On Creating !

Vincent

WIP 2, Swaney Road Barn - Update

Here is the second Work In Progress (WIP) image from the "Swaney Road Barn" drawing. The Fence post is complete and the barbed wire is moving right along to the right of the viewer. I have the Fence work started as well and am pleased with how the wrapping of the wire is looking.
As you can see, I have done some of the foreground work in the weeds and that is very time consuming. I must be patient while doing this work because trying to work to rapidly causes mistakes and those are hard to fix or work into the image. As this is an image put together from many different scenes I have the freedom to work in pretty much anything that I feel works. I want to stay true to my theme of a rural landscape of a barn and fence post and fence set in very early fall where the weeds are taking hold of the scene.

The barn itself with hold a very special image on the facing side. The second part of the name for this drawing will become more clear when I have developed the image a bit farther. Untill then, I will keep that part a secret.

I have starteded the barn itself and have some of the siding planks in. You can see the door that I have added to the lower corner of the barn. It hasn't been used in quite some time as you can see the ivy has started to take it over. The trees that are on the hill just to the viewers left of the corner of the barn are a small stand of maples. I have used both my medium and fine point ball point pens for the work in the image. I used the medium point mostly for toning and shadowing and the fine point for detail line work.

The grass work in the mid-ground was done all with the fine point pen. Each blade of grass is done with very small stroke on top and beside each other. I find that this method works well to keep the eye from picking up a seam in the layering of the grass. I don't what the viewer to be able to pickup on where I started or ended each time I worked in the grass area. The grass work is done with shortest strokes farther away from the viewer and grdually larger one closer to the viewer or toward th bottom of the page if you will.

Well, that's about it for now. I will update this image more frequantly now that I have gotten some things worked out on my updating schedule. Please check back often and if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly at vince@rural-route-one.com

Swaney Road Barn WIP's (Work In Progress)

Hello everyone, I will be using my blog spot to post work in progress images and this is one of them. The "Swaney Road Barn" drawing is completed and the Limited Edition Prints are ready and available for purchase on my website. But I wanted to post the first work in progress (WIP), image from this drawing. The fence post in the drawing is one of two that are in it. The first is closer to the viewer in the scene and therefore large and more detail can be seen. I love doing old wood posts and fences. They have so much character that no two are alike. There are approx. 6 hours of drawing time in the completion of this post. Lots of work yet to do at this point in the drawing. The foreground fence and weeds present many different challenges. As you can see there is also some barbed wire strands that run around and to and from the posts in the scene. This is very challenging in and of it's self. The twists and highlights on each must be done one at a time with careful consideration of the next. If you have any questions regarding this part of the drawing please feel free to ask me at vince@rural-route-one.com and I will get back to you as soon as possible. Cheers !

Another Pam Portrait

Here is another lady named Pam that I did a portrait of last year. The portrait was done as a memorial for her. She was killed in a motorcycle accident in April 2008. She would have been my youngest son's mother-in-law. This is an example of the dark darks that can be achieved with layering ball point pen medium. If you look closely at the eyes you can see that there is a slight difference in the right from the left. Pam lost her right eye when she was young and had a glass eye. I did not try to alter this specific difference to make them more semetrical as in a classical portrait but, rather I wanted to keep her image totally her. She is dearly missed... Cheers!

Portrait Commission - Pam DIgnan

Hello everyone, been a couple of days since I was here to post. Been working pretty steady these days. Here is a portrait commission I finished and delivered last week. It is of a lady I know when she was 16. She is now 51. I did the drawing in my Staedtler "Triplus" Ball Point Pens. It took 15 hours to complete. It is done on Hammer Mill Acid Free Heavy Cover Stock for Color Laser Printing. She loved it and it is to be a gift to her husband who took the photo of her originally. It was taken on slide film so I had to work from the slide image. It was pretty dark as it was taken on an over-cast day. None the less, I feel it came out pretty well.

Thanks for looking !

Vincent

Keep On Creating !

www.rural-route-one.com

Color Pencil Drawing

This is a color pencil drawing I did a few months back for my wife. They are images of our two Labs. The black one, Bear, we lost last year to a rapid growth cancer in his neck. The Chocolate, Maggie, is our current fur kid. She is now 11 months old. At the time I did this drawing she was 6 months and the ref. photo I used was from when she was 3 months old. We miss Bear and Love Maggie Mae (M & M).

Welcome

Hello to you and thank you for coming by my first blog. I hope to keep this updated so that it can be a source of freshness to those who follow my work.

I will be posting my work in progress images here and posting more small imcrimental changes to it than on my full site. I hope that you stop by often as I begin to develop this little insight to my Ball Point Pen drawing world.

I also plan on posting my Plein Air work here and my daily drawings and sketches. My ATC drawings will also posted here.

That's all for now. "Keep On Creating"

Vincent