This shiny rock bed is filled with more colors than you might normally see in nature. That’s because the detailed images are actually colored pencil drawings by artist Ester Roi. Based in Southern California, Roi spends much of her time studying how rocks and flowers interact with water. To produce visual representations of this effect, she draws with pencils, crayons, and oil pastels on her invention, the Icarus Drawing Board, where wax-based materials soften and melt upon a heated board. She says this technique is perfect to achieve the “smooth gradations and dissolving hues that permeate [her] art.”
Roi uses canvas paper, first drawing her coarse images within the texture of the paper. She then allows the waxy substances to melt together to create the glossy perfection of water gliding across the surface of each stone and the unnaturally flawless rippling waves and bubbles of the surrounding water. The drawings have such realistic detail that viewers can even see the reflection of the sky within the water. The colors easily blend together to create an illusion of perfection sparkling right before your eyes. Scroll down to see examples of the magical transformation, before and after the process takes place.
Ester Roi’s website
via [Colossal]