Ah, this drawing took a lot of hours to complete, but I'm very happy with the end result! I'm pleased with the wonderful vibrancy I got in the colour against black.
I'm already looking ahead to other pieces I can do in digital pastel, but for now, I'm off to get this kink out of my neck...

It's hard to believe that it took most of one work day just to lay in the colour in the trees, plus add another rooftop, but it did! I'm close to finishing – shingles take an extraordinary amount of time to colour in!

I managed to get much more done on the drawing today, laying in more colour in the buildings in the background, as well as blocking out the shape of the trees:

Trudging through laying in more colour around the Atlas building as I fight off a cold. More progress tomorrow, I hope!

Stage three... The sketch is developing fairly slowly, but surely!

I finished most of the Atlas building and a good chunk of the fence line today. My main goal is to lay in base colours to start, then move on to highlight colours later.

On to something new this week. I've long been a fan of drawing and painting on a black surface, whether that's black illustration paper or sketching using black scratch board. This digital drawing is coloured chalk pastel on black paper, and the reference I've used is a photo I took of the Atlas Lumber building at Heritage Park in Calgary.
My process involves working and thinking in negative – in many cases, shapes and lines emerge as I lay in blocks of colour, as opposed to sketching preliminary lines in first, then filling them with colour.
This is the first stage of the drawing:

Today was spent placing in very dark shadows and the brightest of the highlights into the turtle shell. The final step was to indicate the ground with just a scattering of gravel.
Here is the turtle sketch finished:

Ah, it's Thursday, and that has come to mean... a blog about food! I can't help it – sometimes food looks too pretty not to take a picture of. This meal was chicken and veggie tacos prepared by my dear sister on the weekend. Yum!

It was painstaking details today, mainly in the turtle's face and front legs. I'm slightly bug-eyed and head-achy, but overall, happy with the quality of light and shadow I've achieved so far: