Saturday, August 22, 2009

I've been riding the 1 train up to the Bronx a lot lately. The train is elevated in that section.

Below the station at 225th Street, it's dirty, crowded, and noisy with the train tracks overhead and the traffic on Broadway.

But up above the street, as the train passes along the platform, I look out the windows on the west side and see a view of buildings that makes me smile.



Scene seen from the 1 train, Bronx. Colored pencil in Moleskine sketchbook.

8 comments:

  1. Awesome! It's like an abstract painting, and it looks great - great idea!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree with kazumiwannabe! It does look like a lovely geometric abstract painting. Did you use watercolour pencils? I'm going to try colour pencils for the first time since primary school. I'm going to take a leaf out of your book and try to draw a flower. That should be fun! I've no idea what I'm doing!

    ReplyDelete
  3. What an excellent abstract - good enough for framing and putting on the wall! I love your choice of colour.

    ReplyDelete
  4. It's lovely! The colors are so vibrant and the composition is really well done. nancy

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks for looking and commenting, everyone. The composition was suggested to me by the scene itself. I've looked at it so often and finally felt compelled to put it on paper.

    Heather, I used plain colored pencils. I usually don't have trouble with pencils, but with the heavy staturation of color on this particular page and with the small size of the notebook, I had smudging. I'm not sure how to deal with that. Suggestions? I do have watercolor pencils, but haven't used them with water yet.

    Flowers are great to draw. They have taught me (and continue to teach me) so much. Have fun!

    ReplyDelete
  6. I tried the watercolour pencils and they failed miserably. Detail was impossible and they left my drawing very flat. I must try my normal colouring pencils.

    To stop smudging, place a piece of paper under your drawing hand. It really does work. I use it a lot now, especially on my finer detailed drawings.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Today I've had a bad experience with color. The aim was to get a gradual and perfect colorset from a photograph. Everything was against me: got late in the class, didn't take the rigth material, didn't get the enough distance from the object to see it clear. So, the final result was something inaccurate and completely out of context. It didn't seem to be done from the picture it was supposed to be. Then I came back home really upset with my neglicence. That could have been done some other way. I knew it! But deep in my soul, I've hear the inner voice telling me how bad I am to deal with color.
    Got home and went straight to EDM List looking for some confort. Your blog was what I needed to sleep peacefully.

    "the biggest lesson I have learned is how much fun it is to create something, even if it's not perfect"

    That's it! Now I can sleep. Thank you and congratulations for doing this the way you do. All we need is doing it all thetime.

    Have fun

    ReplyDelete
  8. Aurileide, your comment has made my whole day!Thank you.

    Yes, all we need to do is keep doing it.

    And I looked at your blog...you're doing great work!

    ReplyDelete