Brian Williams and tonight's news

Watching the evening news tonight, I got the urge to sketch the host Brian Williams with my new conte pencils -- in three Old Masters colors, plus the tan color of the paper. Brian has such an interesting face, very fun to sketch. While he and some members of the press appear to be interpreting Obama's lipsticked-pig comment in line with their political affiliations (biz as usual), I don't care what Obama subjectively meant. I think he should have chosen a different metaphor so people wouldn't have to decide whether it was a reference to Sarah Palin because of her lipstick riddle or a reference to change, as he now says. Sarah Palin was an obvious and natural connection to make and importantly, a mean-spirited reference, and he should have seen that. He should have seen that.

Bogus Rough Sketch Paper and Blue Conte Crayons

12" x 9", Conte crayons on toned paper, in process

I've found two new art tools I wanted to share, both of which I used in this sketch:

First is the paper. It's a new pad of paper called Bogus Rough Sketch by Aquabee, a 70 weight (almost three times as thick as writing paper) medium brown, and it has a pretty rough texture so it can hold several layers of pastels, charcoal, conte crayons, etc. The brown color can serve as the midtone or skin color for portrait work, as I've done above. It's 100% recycled paper which is great; but it's not acid-free, so if you want it to last longer than you do, you'll need to spray it with that new-fangled magic acid-free-making spray stuff.

>>>>>>>>As an aside: the strangest thing happened when I added the pupils and iris colors -- the brown paper, which is part of the eye color, looked green! If you look closely at the eyes (enlarge it by clicking on the image), between the blue outer ring of the iris and the sepia inner ring around the pupil, you'll see a tiny bit of plain brown paper that will appear green. I love the strange tricks our brain does with color!

Anyway, the SECOND new item: I'm using blue instead of black in the above portrait which is drawn with Conte crayons, a centuries-old medium for drawing. But the traditional drawing colors are black, sepia, sanguine, and white -- rarely is blue substituted for black. The store had no black, so I got the blue. Since blue is the complimentary color of orange, which is a lot like the sepia and sanguine colors, it makes sense that they set each other off so well. I like the blue -- serendipity strikes again!