sketchbook

life drawing 31/08/2010

2010-09-01T05:09:00.000-07:00

~A2 brown recycled paper with charcoal and chalk, 40 minute pose

life drawing 24/08/2010

2010-08-25T15:48:00.001-07:00

Second week at life drawing after a couple of months off. I wasn't too happy with a lot of the drawings I did tonight, the one scanned here was the best I think. I was trying some new materials tonight - a block of black chalk pastel - don't think i'll keep using it as it wasn't too fun/easy to use :-)

life drawing 17/08/2010

2010-08-25T15:38:00.000-07:00

First day back at life drawing class and things were rather difficult! After the usual set of 20 30 second sketches to get into the right frame of mind we did some longer poses, around 20 - 40 minutes. The first was done in charcoal in a looser style, the lying down pose was done with a couple of different weights of pencils.

life drawing 15/06/2010

2010-06-15T17:59:00.001-07:00

illustration friday - early

2010-05-27T18:47:00.000-07:00

illustration for this weeks' illustration friday topic - early

copic multiliner and faber-castell brush tipped pens

redrum

2010-05-20T19:11:00.000-07:00

pastel drawing of the racehorse redrum

illustration friday - equipment

2010-05-17T16:08:00.001-07:00

oil paint on canvas

illustration friday - equipment

not sure why I chose military equipment for this oil on canvas painting. I've only done a couple of paintings so far and still finding it pretty difficult to get it looking realistic. Also.. there's some reflected light from the paint, especially visible in the sky - finding it hard to photograph oil paints as they can be a bit reflective.

illustration friday - fearless

2010-05-12T10:58:00.001-07:00

fearless mos fights the kraken
pen and ink

life drawing 11/05/2010

2010-05-11T16:00:00.000-07:00

Life drawing again this week, and I don't think it went as good as last week. As usual we started off with some 1 minute poses, and then a lot of 30 second poses. I experimented this week with using some thick charcoal sticks on their edge to get quick broad strokes, and then a bit of finger blending if I had time. I quite like how some of these turned out (wel, for 30 second sketches anyway! :)

Then I think the rest of the time we spend on 20 - 30 minute poses. I tried a few different things but I wasn't too happy with the proportions and layout.

On the plus side, the light seemed a bit better tonight, a lot of the time I'm finding it difficult to see shadows and tone on the models body but it seemed a bit clearer tonight.

Mostly charcoal with a bit of chalk on the sitting pose.

biro experiments

2010-05-09T18:38:00.000-07:00

I saw some amazing drawings recently done by an artist using just a biro pen, I had to give it a try! This is my attempt, a lot smaller than his drawings and not nearly as realistic, but a fun experiment. The biro feels quite good to draw with and you can get some light crosshatched tones but it's really slow going, and pretty unforgiving. Here's a link to the biro artists' website.

cocoon

2010-05-05T17:06:00.000-07:00

ink on bristol board

illustration friday site

life drawing 04/05/2010

2010-05-04T17:50:00.000-07:00

lobster attack

2010-04-29T17:00:00.000-07:00

pencil, brush & ink, watercolour

life drawing 27/04/2010

2010-04-27T17:36:00.000-07:00

illustration friday - ahead

2010-04-26T19:07:00.000-07:00

"ahead" - ink and brush with charcoal

mos with piano

2010-04-26T15:36:00.000-07:00

charcoal drawing (it's 1280x1024 pixels, perfect for your desktop! :-)

outdoors sketching

2010-04-24T10:29:00.000-07:00

Overtoun House. fountain pen (Rotring ArtPen M & EF lovely pens!).

tree stump, charcoal (vine charcoal, Conte 2B Charcoal pencil, Conte Sanguine pencil)

I'm much more used to drawing still life from photographs, but today I got outside with the aim of drawing something. Both drawings were a bit harder because I had to hold the paper awkwardly. The building was a lot more complex than I thought when I started, it was gettingn cold too so I think I was beginning to rush things towards the end. The tree stump - I'm not even sure if it's recognisable as that, I find it hard to draw things like this that are complex but without any real recognisable shape, like drawing rocks and things. I guess it's good practice at drawing exactly what I am seeing.

life drawing 20/04/2010

2010-04-20T16:20:00.001-07:00

Another night of drawing at the botanic gardens. These two are both 30 minute poses, both drawn in charcoal. The figure lying down was quite heavily blended, not so sure about the face on that one!

19/04/20010

2010-04-19T16:27:00.000-07:00

I wanted to try a more illustrative style tonight, of the 3 drawings, this one turned out the best. Sketched in pencil then drawn with ink and brush. I think next time I'll go for a more sketchy look than this.

life drawing 13/04/2010

2010-04-13T16:23:00.000-07:00

The life drawing class at the botanics has a good friendly atmosphere, plus, biscuits at half time!

red chair 12/04/2010 - and how jpegs can fail us

2010-04-12T17:06:00.001-07:00

Pencil Drawing. Some figure practice, drawn from a Dr Sketcheys photo posted on facebook. I was trying to reduce the noise levels and accidentally made it red but I quite liked it so I kept it like that. Unfortunately Jpeg images can't handle pure colour very well so it turned out even more blurry when I uploaded it!!
Update: Aha, I made it a .png file and that fixed it! (the blurry one is the crappy jpeg for comparison)

life drawing 30/03/2010

2010-03-30T12:47:00.000-07:00

5 Minute pose, sanguine pencil. Focusing on the shade instead of lines

5 Minute pose, using the side of a charcoal stick to do fast, broad strokes.

Another 5 minute pose, charcoal.

30 minute pose, pencil.

ink and water sketches

2010-03-20T19:17:00.000-07:00

I felt unproductive while watching TV, so every so often I would pause what I was watching (The Wire, season 2 !) and do a quick sketch of who was onscreen. These are very quick messy sketches done with a rotring fountain pen. I noticed this pen smudged a lot when in contact with water so I experimented with using a wet brush over the drawings. I think some of them turned out quite interesting.

moleskine drawings

2010-03-18T19:07:00.000-07:00

some ink drawings done on a moleskine sketchbook. the statue was coloured with felt pens, the balloons were coloured with watercolour paints.

life drawing 16/03/2010

2010-03-16T09:56:00.000-07:00

This was one of the longer poses we drew on the night, time taken was around 30 minutes. The drawing is A3 size, pencil on cartridge paper.

new sketchbook blog

2010-02-17T17:23:00.000-08:00

I'll use this page to upload sketches and drawings, to help chart progress.