"Tic, tac, tic, tac advance the hands marking the inexorable passage of time. That which seems eternal but which is found insufficient.
At the rhythm of their hands we are born, we play, their advance makes us grow and prosper; capricious marks us the rhythm.
Tic, tac, it slows down sometimes in the tedium of waiting. But when he finlay what we expect, his rhythm changes capricious and passes like a sigh, ephemeral but beautiful.
Time that is born with us, time counted and therefore, precious. With age, it accelerates its progress and we ask ourselves, have I taken advantage of it?
Time, friend and enemy, just ally and cruel rival. Do not blame the time because it is in your hands to take advantage of it. Do it right and you will smile satisfied when your clock stops ringing."

This is my entry to the contest "ART EXPLOSION WEEK 31" Hosted by @juliakponsford. This week the theme is TIME.

For this contest I wanted to make an illustration in graphite about a composition that I saw days ago which caught my attention. It was a glass hourglass in focus and behind an unfocused mechanical clock.
The image caught my mind, I have days thinking about it until I was able to get the time to illustrate it. It seems to me that the composition was appropriate for the theme of this contest, since it denotes being an artistic challenge, firstly for making the defocus on the clock, and second for giving the effect of glass in the hourglass.

I was able to achieve the effects and I really liked the experience of illustrating this! It was something new and very different from what I usually do, I think the themes of this contest are real challenges for me.

I will show you some pictures of how I was making the composition .:

It was mainly to illustrate the hourglass, this will be the one that will go forward, or at least that will be the impression that I will try to give. With pencils HB, 4B and 6B I was drawing the effects to make the glass, with a moldable eraser I made the lights, this gives more realism to the effect. Also pronounce a little bit the grit that falls.

In the center of the hourglass, I wanted to give some luminous tones, also the reflection of the clock that is behind, this gave a good effect of the glass. Also very delicately dark ones which will demonstrate the distortion of the images that are reflected in the glass, this depending on where the point of light is. In this case I focus it behind the whole image, since with just a little light many things can be reflected in the glass.

With the moldable eraser, and the diffuser I gave light to the sand pellets that are in the dark part of the hourglass.

The next thing was to make the background, this clock should be out of focus, so most of the work I did with a brush and graphite powder, the brush and the diffuser give this effect. The problem is, that the brush often remove and clean the graphite and there are clear parts that make the work look bad, i have to repeat the process as many times as necessary to be completely covered.

Finally mark each needle of the clock with the same process that I showed in the image, some areas darker than others, everything depends on the perspective that each person has.

The tools I used for this job were:

- Mechanical pencil with 2mm HB, 2B, 4B and 6B mines.
- A4 Sheet of paper.
- Moldable eraser.
- Brush.

Thank you very much for visiting my post, I hope you like it and thanks again to @juliakponsford for your contest. I really like it a lot.

I also want to thank my friend @jcalero who helped me with the small introductory poem, he is a great writer. You can visit his blog here: El blog de Speedy

Any suggestions will be welcome in the comments. Until next time!