pencil drawing – Ink, Yarn & Beer

A Baby Cup and a Lily

Today has been one of those days when daily chores fill up life: laundry, housework, and so on. While there is still time to do some creative things, I need to get out of the house before I scream! Playing domestic goddess gets really old really fast, and the best cure for that is a bit of a change of scenery. Even though it is grey and gloomy outside, it is still better than 4 walls and one more load in the dryer.

I have a baby cup – a sippy cup – on my desk, filled with water which I use to dilute my iron gall ink as needed. It is a very important item of stationery intent. Certainly it warrants memorialization.

And then there are lilies. I have gobs of these orange lilies all over the place in pots. They get pretty rangy if they are in semi-sun conditions – like over 3′ tall. The yellow ones I have are shorter. Neither are fragrant like Asiatic lilies, which are a definite favorite, but they do endure and bloom over a long time period. Still, they are a lovely flower, bright and cheerful, and rather fascinating to look at – they are just so orange or so yellow it is hard to believe. In pencil, they are certainly more subdued.

The sippy cup had some subtle shadings which were a challenge. What I was especially intrigued by was how much I learned about the lilies when I started to draw them – the petal shapes, number of stamens and pistils, and colors of the same. Observation is rather surprising at times.

6 / 30

I think I am getting some of the points of this course and the usage of pencil to create value studies. First, I changed simply to an HB pencil and a smooth paper with a tiny bit of tooth. The bristol was too smooth a paper and the 2B and 4B pencils just smudged too easily despite my best efforts.

The teacher, Roberts, speaks of structure, rather than subject or detail, as the purpose of these drawings. This means masses of value, not picky details. The details can come in the painting, more so as it becomes larger. The value studies help sort out directing the eye to the point of interest.

The white cliff across the water is the focal point of the drawing, and, ostensibly, the painting. To lead the eye there I vignetted as one does in photography, but this time with graphite. The corners of the drawing are deliberately darker. A sort-of cloud or fog bank is light against the sky in the distance. I tried to use the pale reflection of the cliff in the water to draw the eye as well. Finally, I reworked the piles of sea weed and flotsam to aim the viewer toward the cliffs. The same can be said of the vegetation on the land above the cliffs.

I am beginning to get more comfortable with this approach to painting using a value study. 30 days of value studies is changing my eye and thought processes. Hopefully it will pay off in the future.

4 / 30

I did this one yesterday afternoon, meant to post it, but something distracted me. And, I cannot even remember what it was!

Thirty Days

I just finished a course on drawing as a preliminary to one on brushwork, and then color theory. Between will be challenges, and the challenge between drawing and brushwork is a 30-day challenge to do small, preliminary sketches in pencil.

One of the things I have enjoyed about the course, taught by Ian Roberts, is the development of drawing as a preliminary to a painting. Initially, as in the first few weeks, shapes were simple and the point was to carve out space on a 2D surface to create a 3D image. We ended with a challenge of doing one such sketch a day for 30 days – or however many sketches we could do. I have time to do 30, so 30 it will be.

I never do value studies, but I admit to laziness and impatience on my part. So, I decided that I needed to do something which will shake up my approaches to painting. As well, values are always hard for me to see as color always gets me. Roberts says, “Color gets all the attention but value does the hard work.” Or something like that. So true!

What I have enjoyed in particular is how Roberts approaches composition – leading lines, horizontal, verticals, and all leading to the focal point of the picture. I think I am getting that. The direction of the pencil lines indicates, too, the vertical, diagonal, and horizontal. Brush strokes can indicate the same.

Obviously the first picture has some verticals – and things we expect to be vertical, even if tipsy, such as the fence posts on either side of the road. The second one, a picture of low tide at a local beach, doesn’t seem to have any verticals except in the cliffs. But wait! The lines of the ocean and beach are nearly vertical – something I never considered until Roberts pointed them out.

I admit, I am curious how I will get my black and white studies onto a painted surface in color, but I guess that will come with time and practice. All told, I will be in his class through August, and I hope by that time to see some improvement.

Sliding into Home Plate . . .

It seems that these past two months have been about craziness. Or cascade effects – one thing leading to another.

I got my sewing cabinet by paying for it and leaving 3 weeks between purchase and delivery. To make it work I had to move a book case and a tansu; the book case to the garage, the tansu to the studio. To put the book case into the garage meant at least 5 trips to the Goodwill donation site, and moving around and discarding more crap than anyone else should be allowed to have. To put the tansu into the studio meant moving photography equipment into the garage and into the studio, taking up the space of a displaced book case.

To move stuff into the studio meant moving stuff out of the studio, consolidating art and photography supplies, moving books into the living room.

To make more room in the garage for book cases and photography stuff meant moving boxes of books from the garage into the living room. Boxes of books in the bedroom closet leapt out and moved into the living room as well. A call to the book buyer meant setting up a date for him to come by, and sorting out 25 boxes of keep and sell. Most were sell. Two book cases in the living room joined the sell pile, as did 3/4 of a book case in the family room.

The living room became the unliving room.

Meanwhile, the sewing cabinet was delivered and set up. Next, figuring out how to position it – facing the wall? facing the sliding doors? (The latter won out.)

Time for the book buyer. He arrived. He bought. I threw in what he didn’t want to buy. Now the living room is once more a room with room, and only one book case full of books.

In this mix, a quilting class is ongoing, my Pencil Portrait class ended, my painting continues, and a colored pencil drawing class begins tomorrow. I have to put together my drawing box with supplies for a new class, some different things, some new things, some old things. The class begins tomorrow at 9:30 a.m., and like the good kiddie I am, I want to be ready for the first day of school.

The finale came this morning. I took to the road, to a real, live, professional office store 30 miles away and got the last item: the chair for the sewing cabinet. Not some rinky-dink piece of junk, but a real chair that should last a long time, and keep me comfy for hours of sewing. Mine is the one in the middle.

Finally, time for a breath, coffee, step out to admire the flowers, and then tidy up all that was left in chaos these past few days.

I have room on my book shelves, closet space, living room space, sewing space, art space, and enough room in the garage to swing a cat under the full moon.

More still needs be done, such as hanging pictures and more garage purging, but the big struggle is done. Time now to settle in and see how it all works out.

Yay!