What a little time and practice will do

A year ago shortly after I started working with colored pencils, I developed a painting from a photograph of a goldfish. I was very pleased at the time with the results of the exercise. This year, my students wanted to do that goldfish project. So, I wrote up the instructions, included a line drawing and the original reference photo and we went to work. When the project was finished, my students had done a very good job and learned a great deal about how to work with reference photos. More important for me was seeing the difference that a year of working with the medium made in my work. In the last year, I have spent a lot of time learning to manipulate the medium, but also working from photos and making a serious effort to really see what I was looking at. The difference between the original work and the new rendering of exactly the same subject is startling. Both pieces are done on the same paper, white Bristol Plate, and are rendered using the same Prismacolor Premier pencils. The moral of the story? Practice, Practice, Practice!!!!!

Here is the original goldfish rendering done in 2008:


Here is the 2009 version of the same goldfish: