Operation: Fill-A-Frame #1

Now available in my Etsy shop:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/65263488/oleander-moth-charisma-original-artwork

Number one is complete! A couple of nights ago I dreamed about moths- fuzzy, soft, friendly moths flying around and landing on people and instead of going "EW EW EW!" and swatting and flailing at the moths, everyone welcomed them, which made me happy. I always enjoy a friendly moth visit :)
Anyway, the dream was what inspired this piece. I've wanted to draw or paint an Oleander Hawk Moth with Oleander forever, so I finally did it.

I did 3 new and different things with this piece:

#1 I left the background white. I usually can't do that with colored pencils because the little flecks that accumulate as you press down HARD (like I do) stick to the paper and make tiny obnoxious specks. You can blow at them and hope they fly away, or sometimes take a pin or tip of an exacto and try to remove them like a surgical procedure. More often I end trying to so-gently brush them away with my hand... which results in a colored smear, hence why my backgrounds are always filled with color. At least with a painting I could just paint the whole background white when I'm done and cover up the mistakes! ...Now don't get me wrong, I had my share of little flecks that did find their way onto parts of the paper where I didn't want them! When that happened I added a flower bud or a leaf to cover it up :)

#2 I used a new set of eco-friendly colored pencils. I wrote a little about this yesterday in my review of the colored pencils (it was my first time using them and I loved them). I picked out the frame I was going to fill, then grabbed my box of colored pencils and picked out the paper I was going to use- a Strathmore drawing paper made from recycled paper. I realized at that point that if I used my eco-friendly colored pencils instead of my regular ones, this whole finished piece would be made from environmentally friendly materials and I thought that would be really cool. So I put back the box of colored pencils and, instead, took out the little package of 12 eco-friendly pencils.

This presented a challenge as well because I went from having a whole box of many colors from which to choose, to having only these 12. And of those 12, I used only 9:

#3 I let the drawing overflow onto the mat. I've always wanted to do a drawing and mat it and have parts of the drawing spill onto the mat for that sort-of 3D effect. I've seen it done so many times by other artists but never actually completed a drawing where I felt like putting some of it onto the mat would necessarily add anything to it. I decided that it would be fun to do with this piece.

Here are some pictures of the piece as it progressed:

Moth is done, starting on the flowers.

The drawing on paper is done. Time to mat it up!

The drawing extended onto the mat.

Framed & ready for its close-up :)