This is a little colored pencil drawing I did way back in 2006 called Slow Stroll. I photographed a turtle going across a gravel road and I wanted to capture it on canvas. It so happens I was doing a few colored pencil drawings back then so I decided to use pencil rather than oil. This is drawn on a light brown matte board.
With pencil drawing you have to draw everything out first to get the composition right because layering like I do with paint is almost impossible. This takes a lot of planning and prep work which to be honest drives me nuts. I'm more of a "Wing it" type of artist. I usually know what I want the composition to look like in my head and i just go for it on the canvas without a lot of prep work simply because it kills a lot of the spontaneity and freedom in my work. I'm not saying that it's right or wrong, I'm just saying that's the way I prefer to paint and I'm comfortable with it. That being said it was still very interesting to work through the colors of the turtle and all the lights and darks of the shadows on the bits of gravel. I kind of played up the coloring on the shell of the turtle because it looked a little bit dull otherwise and I thought I needed a little pop in an otherwise two toned drawing.
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