How does an afternoon quickie turn into a marathon? Allow me to explain.
It was mid-afternoon. 3:00. I hadn’t been doing as much sketching as I would like to have been doing. I thought “I’ll just do a quickie. Or several quickies.” Não é um problema. So first I looked through the stash of photos I’ve taken lately. "Hmm… here’s one of three friends in Vale do Boi."
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| over-exposed |
But the photo was pretty crummy. Over-exposed. “Well, I’ll just do a quick fix on it. Perk it up a bit,” I said to myself. (No one else was there to talk to.)
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| touched up |
That’s a little better. Honestly, I didn’t think I’d be able to salvage it, but it’s okay.
“Now to get down to business. Hmmm. Pencil first? Or straight to pen?” Well, I started with pencil. “I’ll just rough in the basics, then switch to pen.” But I got a bit carried away with the pencil. Then I thought, “I’ve put so much into this it’s going to look strange if I ink in all those pencil lines. It’ll be too busy.” Some of the pencil lines were indicators for where shading or colour values change. “I guess I’d better use coloured pencil to take advantage of all the details I’d sketched out.”
So, three and a half hours later (yeah yeah, I’m slow) I'd managed to turn what was meant to be a quickie - or several quickies - into a full afternoon of cross-eyed, mind-numbing, pencil-pushing productivity.
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| one of my friends in Vale do Boi, coloured pencil, 17cm x 16cm |
Now I really need a nap! Then a coffee.
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| I can fall asleep anywhere. |
