— Limeade Studio

A drawing of a table and two chairs in ink and soft chalk pastels, purposefully playing with color. I used a Micron brush pen for the contour drawing and colored it using chalk pastels. Not only did I want to use completely different colors than the actual furniture, but I wanted to use red and green. Generally, I avoid red and green combinations for fear of evoking an inappropriate Christmas theme.

10 in by 12 in, ink and soft pastels on paper, 2010.

A basic still life set-up using transparency with light and shadow for Drawing II at A-B Tech in 2010. We did this same drawing twice, first in pencil and then in charcoal.

15 in by 21 in, graphite pencil on watercolor paper, 2010.

In Drawing I at A-B Tech, we did the usual still life drawing with eggs. So here is one in pencil on paper.

12 in by 16 in, graphite pencil on paper, 2008.

A cover illustration for a book design mock-up for Computer Art II at A-B Tech. The assignment was to create a coffeetable book design for either War of the Worlds, Heart of Darkness, or Lord of the Flies using inDesign. I chose to create all of my illustrations by hand and scanning them into the computer. I decided early to avoid influences from the movies I’ve seen and look closely at the descriptions from H.G.Wells. It also made sense to work era-appropriate rather than modern contemporary.

8½ in by 10 in, charcoal, watercolor, and gouache on bristol board paper, 2009.

In Drawing II at A-B Tech, we were given an assignment to somehow combine a soft object and a hard object. We were also to use a medium that we either hadn’t used yet or felt uncomfortable with. I chose oil pastels because I didn’t like my first try at them, and I also used soft chalk pastels because I hadn’t used them at all yet. I made lists of hard objects one day, and a list of soft objects the next day. I tried various combinations of them, but I knew immediately what I was going to do after the first sketch of a kitten-headed snail. Once it was complete, I was very pleased with my drawing of the brave little kitten-headed snail. Most of the class, however, saw a poor little kitten stuck inside giant shell.

18 in by 24 in, oil pastel, chalk pastel, graphite, and gouache on watercolor paper, 2010.

This drawing was inspired by early drawings by Andy Warhol, and a nod to Picasso’s Still Life (1914) along the bottom. I used a Micron ink brush pen to draw the soda bottles and can, lime and banana. The blocks of color are heavily diluted gouache brushed on. Unfortunately, the gouache was so watered down that it caused the paper to wrinkle. I will probably create some pieces like this larger in the future on masonite hardboard.

10 in by 14 in, ink and gouache on paper, 2010.

We explored a variety of papers in Drawing II at A-B Tech, as well as brush and ink techniques. The Indian Raja paper is a stiff and coarse paper that holds up very well to being saturated with water. I did a series of drawings of Canton, NC by covering the paper in water and then brushing inks into the wet paper. As the paper dried, careful brush strokes were then used to draw contour lines for the paper mill, city, and trees. Three of these were then cropped and arranged into a triptych.

9½ in by 20¾, in ink on raja paper, 2010.