Tag: drawing

More Pencil Portraits

Last year I started a pencil portrait class, and since have continued with it when offered. It used to be through the local adult school, but with Pandemia, that was quickly shut down. Thus, the teacher offered it to us outdoors at a local park, and I jumped on it, as did others.

The above portrait is the first one I did this year. I was determined to do it within the two hours we have for the outdoor class, rather than the 10 hours I took for the little boy below last summer. The style is rough and quick, but important in the sense of working to get proportions and shadings correct.

This little boy is from a photograph from the mid 1950s. He is really sweet and I think I managed to catch his character. He looks older in the drawing than he did in the photograph.

I think I may have posted this drawing here or on another blog, but this one I was determined to catch a different position of the head. Proportions change when the head position changes, and I was rather pleased with this one!

This profile I completed last week. The photo I used as reference came from Pixabay, a great resource for royalty-free photos. I decided to print out the photo on my laser, forcing black and white, and then using it taped upside down on my drawing board, as suggested by Betty Edwards in her book “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain”. It worked! At the end, I turned it right side up to put in the eyelashes . . .

This is my current WIP. I started it last Wednesday. As with its predecessor, this one is also being done with the portrait upside down, and from a photo on Pixabay. It’s about 75% done I think. I need to work on the lights / darks and shadows a bit more, as well as make the hair more distinctive.

I got a few others in my class turning their reference photos upside down! The one thing they noticed, as did I, is that the shadows and shapes become dominant – you aren’t drawing a person any longer, but you are copying light and dark, shape and shadow. It’s amazing how well it works.

Well, time to wander off. The day has been spent reorganizing my life, meaning the garage, the closet, the studio, and the bedroom. Cocktail or whisky, anyone?

More Impressions of Slater’s Bridge

I have been rather lazy today, too lazy to set up to paint. So, an old exercise came to mind: make a messy color mix on paper and draw over it with ink. I had Slater’s Bridge already chosen as the subject matter for this exercise  (partly for Ms. Fragglerocking, partly because I think it’s such a lovely bit of stonework). As a result, I plopped on colors and then drew the bridge from different angles.

This was the first one. No idea how the cobalt violet would work, but used leftover watercolor paint from my dirty palette along with fresh colors. Then I drew. I admit, I came in and added some color after I added the drawing to get a bit more definition. It sort of felt like cheating!

So, with the thought of cheating in mind, I did this one. Yes, I deliberately put manganese blue at the top, and then just added the cadmium orange and greens. However, I didn’t add any colors after finishing the ink drawing.

Daily work – daily play – daily adventures in art!

Atilt

We had only a 2-week session of out pencil portrait class. We met in a park behind the local library for a couple of hours for the past two Wednesdays, and I will miss them so much! Perhaps next year? I hope so.

Our teacher, Steve, is a lovely man, encouraging with a sharp eye and pithy, simple suggestions. I know I have improved a great deal in the few sessions we have had.

So, for today’s portrait, I chose to use the photo below, found on Pixabay. I love the expression in this photo, as well as the challenges it posed – the tilt of the head, the odd angles, the contrast. My own drawing failed to catch this beautiful face, but it did work as far as placement of eyes, nose, mouth, ear. It was really a tough study!

The pencil portrait class has gotten me interested in drawing faces. I’ve done three so far. Maybe something to schedule every Wednesday morning to keep my hand in it, and hope Steve will honor us with another series next year.

Inktober 2019: Days 1-6

This year for Inktober 2019 I decided to work only with iron gall ink, which I made earlier this year.  I am using pen nibs and brush to create the drawings, always done directly with the pen and no preliminary pencil drawing.  The first two pictures are not exclusively iron gall ink, but may be a mix of permanent ink and iron gall.

#1:  Ring 

Tomato cages – I saw these when I was out on the patio trying to figure what to use for rings.

#2:  Mindless

Mindless = Brainless – been watching zombies on TV!  How mindless is that?


#3: Bait

All kinds of bait – jail bait, take the bait, etc.  I chose a fish lure and a mouse trap.  Still warming up at this point for Inktober and getting the groove back, as they say.  This is when the pure iron gall ink begins.  And I decided to do away with the frames I usually use for my photographs.

#4: Freeze 

Again, still warming up.  This one had me stumped.


#5: Build  

Here is when the brain began to work and imagination started warming up.  Heavy equipment for building.  I think it would be a lot of fun to drive one of these things!

#6: Husky  

For those of you who speak English, but may not be aware of the term, “husky” can be big and strong, at least in American English. I like Sumo wrestlers, and though I don’t know much about the sport, I like to watch it now and again.

New Challenges

One thing I find interesting is my need to “drop bombs” on my daily life.  What this means is simply that getting into a rut is not a good thing, and shaking up the patterns and routines are necessary to keep life interesting.  For example, I have settled into this pattern:  coffee, breakfast, clean up myself and the house, figure out evening meals, and then paint and draw.  Much as I like the last, I find myself getting stuck in a rut.  The other things I like doing don’t get done.  And, I get really bored; worse, I feel like I am not “accomplishing” anything!  That’s the problem with having a lot of interests and an impatient, restless personality.  I irritate myself as well as others.

The other day, I finally got around to buying a new laptop computer.  My old ones were worthless except as boat anchors.  Poor graphics and connectivity.  Slow.  I have one, a Windows XP machine dedicated to my film scanner.  Another was not forward compatible with Windows – can you believe that???  Anyway, as a result, I had to clean up the bloat ware on the new laptop and install software I use.  With everything internet-based, it’s interesting to now own a laptop with only a few external connections and no DVD drive.  The result was I finally broke down and decided to enroll in Lightroom CC for photography.

I really like LR as a jump-off point for other software to edit photographs.  The catalog system is great.  However, the Creative Cloud version has some things I need to learn!  I have never been a cloud-based person, preferring to keep stuff on my own hardware rather than rely on others to take care of me.  As times change, though, so must we, even if I am not sure this is always for the best.  What I know I will like is being able to access my photos from either my laptop or my home computer without having to use sneaker net anymore.  That is also what I like about Google and being able to sync across computers.

The challenge here is making sure I do what I like.  It’s actually very hard to find time to do all the things I want to do.  Poor weather has kept me in the house a lot – who wants to go out in pouring rain? – but that is like house arrest after a bit.  The LR is going to be a challenge, and fun.  The bigger challenge is to find the time to do so many other things!

I have made one promise to myself, though:  I will draw or paint every day, no matter what else is on the agenda.