Pauline Clay
Colored Pencil Artist

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"The Seasons of Life"

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While in Hawaii, I came across the ʻamaʻu fern, which starts out red then turns green as the fronds mature. I feel like this piece uses the fern as a metaphor for life -- the fiery red of youth, the serenity of maturity, and finally, how we disappear into the shadows as we age and then die.

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"Drinking It All In"

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A first trip to New York City, a Broadway play and morning coffee before a day of  sightseeing. It's an eye-opening experience and you have to drink it all in.

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"Togetherness"

 I find the symmetry of the seeds in the center of a sunflower, and the pattern they form, fascinating. There is just something cheerful about sunflowers that makes them a favorite with so many people, myself included. And with everything negative going on in the world, it's good for my soul to work on pieces that make me smile when I look at them.

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"Up Close"

When I saw this sunflower while in Cape Cod for a wedding, I knew I had to draw it. I eliminated the distracting background from my reference photos, instead choosing a simple pale blue to keep the focus on the flower. The biggest challenge was the incredibly detailed seed pattern in the center and the tiny individual blossoms surrounding it.

Sien

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The Contrasts of Hetch Hetchy

While in California a few years ago, we visited Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park where we happened upon this dead tree that had been bleached by the weather.  To me the piece is a contrast between life and death -- the blooming flowers and the dead tree.

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Misty Falls of Milford Sound

While in New Zealand in 2017, we visited Milford Sound, which was too beautiful for words. The water was crashing down from such heights that it created a heavy mist as it  cascaded down, but also the most interesting designs in the water at the base. I love the photos I shot, but I really wanted to see if I could capture the waterfall's movement in a drawing. I used colored pencil for the majority of the drawing and pan pastel for the watery mist.

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Fall's Fading Beauty

I am fascinated by the reflections in a small creek near my home and was determined this fall to photograph the leaves in the water. I was hoping for a sunny day to capture the reflections of the blue sky but a spate of cloudy days and the rapidly dropping leaves left me with no choice but to shoot the reference photos on a dreary day. What I didn't count on was the abstract beauty of the trees' reflections on a gray day. The stark contrast between the brightly colored leaves and the patterns of the trees' reflections created a much more dramatic image that I was able to enhance by using a limited palette on the background.

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