Tag: ink

Drawing Practice

Frustrated with my inabilities to realistically do perspective and depth, which I attribute to my lack of depth perception, I’ve decided to re-edu-um-cate myself!  I signed up for an online gouache class by Lena Rivo, which has been great, as well as bought an eBook version of Bert Dodson’s Keys to Drawing.  I have decided to dedicate part of each day to doing at least one of his exercises if possible.  The hope is to improve my drawing skills, which are the problems behind some of my painting issues.

First exercise is contour drawing.  The purpose of this is to get used to the idea of checking what you see against what you draw, and get the idea into your head that what you see is not what you think.  This means looking at angles and curves as well as relationships of parts to each other.  Here are my exercise examples, diving in feet first!

Next was fun – look at your hand face on – that is, fingers in your face!  Close an eye.  Draw!

And then, imagine a pepper.  Draw it.  Then get a real pepper and take a good, strong look at it, and draw.  My imaginary pepper is at the top, and the real pepper, in three positions and three variations of drawing style, are below.

Very glad I chose to do this!  More to come.

Nowhere House

Another perspective study from hell.  Where do you put the vanishing point on paper where the horizon doesn’t provide one!?!

I used 2 point perspective here for the most part.  To figure this out, I drew the basic sketch onto a piece of paper that was larger than the final sketch.  I decided my horizon line.  Then I drew the building, uprights and then angles for the roof line and base of the building, both on the left and the right.  For the wall, I did the same thing, aiming it at the horizon line and trying to get the top and bottom to line up.

Ummm.  Not sure.  It looks okay in a lot of ways except for the wall – too wide nearer the building perhaps than it should be in the lower left foreground.

And getting into perspective.  I don’t have depth perception – eye docs confirm this.  But I do get distance – I can guestimate a distance and when it is measured, I am pretty accurate.  This makes me think that a sense of distance and depth perception are two different things entirely.

Super Black

The preparations for the Christmas season are done! We had oodles to do as we hosted the family at our house Christmas Day. Now it is time to return to the mundane world and enjoy mundane things, like thinking about what to do rather than having to focus on this project or that. Getting out the drawing supplies is one thing to begin those thoughts.

Fruitful Bowl

Finally, sat down and did some sketching.  I went out with my friend, Sharon, to a local bookstore for coffee, chit chat, and a bit of sketching.  So glad I did!  Good to get out and see a lovely friend, put a pen to paper, and just enjoy the time.  Lately I have been caught up with potential evacuations from local fires and too much TV bingeing (A French Village on Amazon Prime) and photography.  As a result, artwork has been put on hold.  Now, I hope I have the whatever back, and will continue!