The Red Room, Revisited
Prismacolor is hosting a contest on their Facebook page, where the grand prize winner may have his artwork appear on one of their 2012 tins. I decided to create a piece specifically for the contest. A few years ago we did a makeover on a small room in our house, converting it to a den. The walls were painted a rich terra cotta color, and one of the lamps was red stained glass. I nicknamed it "The Red Room", and did a piece called "In the Red Room" (12"H x 9"W Prismacolor pencil on red Artspectrum Colourfix paper, 2007). Earlier this year I was thinking about some ideas for pieces and took a few photos for some poses, and one of these became "The Red Room, Revisited" (15"H x 10"W Prismacolor pencil on black Artspectrum Colourfix paper, December 2011). Here's a picture of both pieces side by side:
One of the main differences between the two pieces is color intensity. In the earlier work, I used the red of the paper with some of the darker red and purple colors (terra cotta, black grape) and grayed lavender for the whites. In the newer piece, I used a fuller range of colors, with complements set side by side. For example, the reds contain: terra cotta, burnt ochre, parma violet, lime peel, mineral orange, poppy red, and dioxazine purple hue. Another difference is that last year I was working with Neocolors quiet a bit, and liked the soft edges you could achieve with them. For the contest, you could only use Prismacolor pencils, but I was still able to create some soft edges only using pencils. I tried to soften details in shadows, while tightly rendering items in bright light. A few detail shots:
As an aside, I'll register the standard artist disclaimer that the scan is quite dark and doesn't show all of the colors in the shadows. Maybe someday I'll figure out the right scan settings to get a good reproduction!
Incidently, these are the last red room drawings because we deconstructed the red room earlier this year, painting the walls blue and installing a dark laminate floor as we converted it into a nursery. Maybe I'll have a new series, "In the Blue Room"?
