Drawing Prompt #3: Tina

Purple leaf

Tina's leaf drawing came late this afternoon - we should ask M.E.G. what species it is*, a Liquid Amber, maybe. Tina says the leaf was quite purple in hue and so she has tried to emulate that with washes in Inktense on her base drawing.  Colour pencil is used on top of the ink wash. She says that she didn't feel that the paper she was using worked well with the pencil, but hasn't said what type of paper it was. Apart from a certain graininess in the shadow wash I don't think the paper is a problem. Putting colour pencil on top of a translucent ink layer can be problematic as the pencil is often rejected by the ink and will not 'take' as well. Ink tends to smooth out the paper fibres reducing the paper surface roughness that grabes the pencil as you draw. That being said I think Tina has overcome this issue quite well, she hasn't pushed or forced the colour pencil but allowed it to work with the ink where it could. The leaf is a good shape and the hues and tonal values are nice. The greens blending to purple then fading to red and yellow is quite effective. The ink layers give the hues a fresh feel and the overlaid pencil tightens up the detail. It appears that Tina has also use a masking fluid** in the white veins and this also works very well. This is a nice, fresh drawing using mixed media successfully.
*Update: M.E.G. says she belives this is a an Acer platinoides. Or 'Norway Maple'
**Update: Tina says no masking fluid was used! So I am very impressed with her level of control of the medium.

'Leaf' by Tina