A Deer Sketch with Colored Pencils

(Prints for this sketch are available now in my Zazzle shop, see bottom of this post)

Life is funny.

One minute you’re happily decking the halls, walls and whatever won’t move and the next minute you’re drawing a deer . . .

with colored pencils . . .

that you’ve never used in your life.

This might not seem that earth-shattering at first glance – and maybe in truth it isn’t – but it did really wake me up to a whole new creative world out there.

First you see a blog post about colored pencils. Just something that catches your eye and provides a few minutes’ distraction.

Like I need any more of those.

And then the next time you’re at the craft store, you decide to play Santa and have him give you a set of Prismacolor pencils . . . only 24 though . . . because you might not be any good at this whole colored pencil thing.

But because you’re a color fiend, you pick up an additional set (Michael’s brand, much cheaper than Prismacolor) because how can you really test out colored pencils if you don’t have a great selection?

And then you wait for inspiration to hit.

And nothing comes that day.

Or the next.

Or even the day after that.

Finally your creative muse finds her way through all of the Christmas lights and ribbon and whispers, “A deer”.

Perfect, you think. You love deer, you love taking photos of deer, you love the deer in your neighborhood. You’ll paint a deer. No, wait . . .

you’ll SKETCH a deer with your new coloring pencils!

Perfect, you say, and I’ll get right to if after I finish this project and that thing over there, and that one last . . . thing.

But Life, my friends, decided the time was now, not later, and while I was scrolling thru Facebook one day I saw this thing of beauty on Fox Hollow Cottage’s wall –

And he said, “Hello”. And I said, Hello to you!

Then I right-clicked and saved him to my computer.

A couple of days later I was talking on the phone with my dear friend, Karen, who I hadn’t spoken to in ages. We talked houses and blogs and blogging and stuff and she was poking around my blog, giving me loads of helpful advice and noticed my cow painting. She said,

“You need to paint more cows . . . or maybe a deer.”

Hello? Did you just say “deer”?

I told her about the beautiful buck I saw on Shannon’s wall and Karen asked me if I’d noticed that there were deer heads all over the internets.

Really? I guess there are, now that I think about it.

Antlers and deer silhouettes and pallet deer and glitter deer and . . . a lot of deer on the internet.

But I haven’t seen a deer sketched with colored pencils on Pinterest.

When I hung up the phone, I picked up my pencils and started drawing and sketching and scribbling and blending and coloring . . .

Now, don’t misunderstand me here, I’m by no means an expert – or even comfortable – with colored pencils yet.

But picking up a new medium, not knowing a thing about it other than to use baby oil for blending colors, the whole process of exploring and learning by trial & error was exciting and rejuvenating.

You just never know what gifts Life might have in store for you, unless you pay attention to its seemingly subtle signals.

When was the last time you picked up a new art medium? What was it? What did you make? Is there something new you’d like to try in 2014?

Colleen

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Deer Head in Pencil Prints & Products

11 x 14 print – $12.95

8 x 10 print – $7.50

16” pillow – $29.95

iPhone 5 cover – $42.95

Samsung Galaxy cover – $47.95

*many more items to come so please check my Zazzle shop often. If there’s a Zazzle product you’d like to have the Deer Head in Pencil put on, please email me.