Picture #3

I had fun doing this picture.  i did a little more planning on this one than I did on the other two.  With them I just started to draw.  With this one I did a preliminary sketch to figure out what went where.  I was concerned with the placement of the leaves and didn't know for sure where they would look best.  I also didn't want anything overlapping so lines from the things underneath would show.  There's no erasing!

This picture of cherries was completely drawn with 22K gold wire and it was done on an 8X8 lightly textured gessoed art board.  This one went quite a bit faster than the first two on smooth boards, in fact, I did it all in one afternoon.  I attribute that to the rough texture of the board.  I liked that in a way but it's harder to get that shine I like so much.  It was easier to get the darker values with the gold than it is on smooth boards and they shine a bit.  You can see the gold reflecting in the darker spots, when it's held in the right light.  That's one quality of these drawings that I love.  It's hard to get that to show in photos, tho.