I had never heard of Chris Van Allsberg until last class but this image, The House on Maple Street was the one that appealed instantly. I personally don’t like pencil shading because I have a tough time doing it but this work was impressive to me. I really like the way he simply has less shading on the bottom of the house, which makes it look like there is some kind of bright like coming from there. Because of that bright light this picture reminded me of the move Home Alone, specifically the part where the kid puts on bright Christmas lights to scare off robbers. The shading makes this picture remind me of that scene, it looks like there is snow on the ground due to the light shading in the road. I think the house is supposed to be taking off due to the caption “It was a perfect lift off” but to me it looks like light.

In Eric Fortune’s case he used an actual picture of a person as reference. He took a picture of this person in the pose he wanted where he wanted and drew his piece from this photo reference. He transfers the sketch to watercolor paper, finding it helpful to correct anatomy on better paper. Another way Eric uses reference to is leave the drawing in a sort of rough state so as not to disturb the paper with erasing. He tries to get enough information from the referenced pencil drawing portion of the work, letting the paint do some of the detail work later on.