Gourd Accepts Colored Pencil Easily

Turning a sometimes moldy dried gourd into a work of fine art is a delight for this artist.  Karen uses a graphite pencil to freehand objects from the drawing table onto the newly cleaned surface of the gourd.  She then woodburns whatever hard lines are needed before laying in contours with warm gray colored pencil to shape the subject matter.  At this point the real fun begins as Karen applies layer after layer of colored pencil to achieve the desired effect. 

Backgrounds are mostly done in colored pencil although on the rare occasion leather dye or even shoe polish may be called for.  Once the art work is finished, Karen buffs the gourd with a clean dry cloth and sprays at least three fine coats of an acrylic spray.  The entire process takes any where from days to months to complete, depending upon the size of the gourd and complexity of the subject matter.  She hopes that you can see that each work is a labor of love.