study - COTTON CANDY SKY © Sharon L Hicks, 2013

Prismacolour pencils, 5 x 7

Art, like life, is all about the choices we make. It's a series of choices, each one based in part on previous choices we have made before. I chose to take the photo in the first place - I could have just looked upward and admired what I saw and then just let it go, but my choice was instead was to pick up the camera and snap this image.

I made a choice to pursue this series of 30 sky studies. I chose to start them all with a basic draft using cotton balls to apply pigment scraped from coloured pencils, I chose to refine them using the pencils directly, and I chose to spend no more than 1 hour on each study.

Then, after all these choices had been made and acted upon, and I had my collection of 30 1-hour studies in hand, I chose to post them here, one at a time, for a total of 30 days. That was the challenge I set for myself, or rather which I 'chose' for myself, and that has necessitated a daily choice of what to write about.

That necessity came from a choice to make this blog more than just a series of pictures. And speaking of pictures, here's the lowdown on today's study ...

            my photo                     after 5 minutes                   after 1 hour

The cropping bug was obviously active again in this study, eliminating a good part of the treeline and tightening up the arrangement of fluffy pink & purple clouds in the late afternoon sky. After the 5-minute draft using cotton balls and scraped pigment, I spent the next 55 minutes building up the colour layers and refining as much detail as possible in that short amount of time.

This one was really fun to do - the clouds just look so cheerful and happy, like tufts of cotton candy floating along in the breeze. Happy colours, happy mood, happy little study. Reminds me of a painting instructor who used to have a programme on TV - you all probably know who I mean so there's no need to name names  -  he talked about 'happy little' this, and 'happy little' that, and 'happy little' accidents ... that was sort of the mood I was in when I did this study.

We'll see what sort of mood tomorrow's entry brings ...

cheers

Sharon