Variations in Purple

Purple flower #2. Markers and coloured pencils. Ulla Hennig July 2012

I definitely love the colour purple. In this drawing I used three markers with three different shades of this colour, and I also used magenta and violet with coloured pencils.

For me purple means energy and an intensive joy of  life. There are so many purple flowers (although I think that there are no purple roses) in summer. When I did the drawing I again had no special flower in mind – however I would be happy to learn that it has some similarity to an existing one.

This time I used pastel paper – I had some left and wanted to know how it would react to the markers.   I noticed a bit of bleeding here and there (thanks to photoshop you don’t see it anymore) but otherwise there was no problem. I am thinking about trying markers on some scraps of some smoother watercolour paper and then experiment with coloured pencils on top of them.

Dozing Dragon

Dozing by ~gnitfried-neleh

Since a few weeks now going through DeviantArt and looking at drawings and paintings (traditional and digital art) has been my daily routine. The number of those which catch my eye and make me look at them in big size is not that high, but I definitely love this one, and there are a few reasons for that:

1. I love dragons. I love Anne McCaffrey’s books in which dragons play an important part. I’ve got one called “Dragonsinger” which has been published in the late 70s of the 20th century (of course I’ve got the German translation-at that time I was not very good reading books in English). That book has survived any attempts to declutter my book shelf. When I was a kid I used to read the story about a dragon kid (kid dragon?) who was so sad about the fact that he could not properly spit fire and because of that was laughed at by his fellow dragons-the poor kid! I love dragons because they are so powerful and -at the same time-wise. I don’t see them as evil creatures which have to slayed, but I think I am bit off the German mainstream with that, with the big German saga of Siegfried slaying the dragon and covering himself with his blood in order to make him safe.
2. I love blue. Blue is the absolute color for me to calm down. Be it the colors of the sea or the color of the sky, the color of a quite lake or noisy river, blue is beautiful!
3. I like the way the artist used a dark blue pastel paper as background. That reminds me to try out using my pencils on colored pastel paper. I haven’t done that yet–it will be a nice project for my Christmas vacations.