Boy With Hat

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Yesterday’s face! I can’t get away from the “red cheeks” idea from #sketchbookskool yet. It seems like every face I do is begging for a little cheek color. I imagine I will wander away from that eventually.

I am trying to do the face a day as a warm up to my day. Also working on a few painting projects. My vacation time is coming to a close in a couple of days, so all the sudden I am in an art project frenzy of trying to finish things up!  And, trying to have a little fun on the side with some mermaid doodles.

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Today and Yesterday

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So far I am keeping up with my goal of a face a day. It’s a challenge for sure!

Really good for practice, and even when I don’t feel like face drawing I am forcing myself to be disciplined and do it anyway. I would like to get to the point where I feel like I can really take more liberty and make better characters.

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A Face Everyday

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I am going to try it. Draw a face every day! Sometimes it might just be really simple, but I am going to try it for 30 days. If all goes well I will keep going!

It is a lot of fun to just “try” to draw a face and let go of the concern of whether it actually looks like the person. I am just trying to capture a “character” or an “expression”. Once I convince myself of that, it’s a lot easier (and more fun).

I really like pulling the sketch into photoshop and adding some color. I forgot how much I like using photoshop this way. Thanks #sketchbookskool for always giving me inspiration and new things to try.

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Faces

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I think I will stick with faces for awhile. The #sktchyapp is great motivation and there are so many expressions to choose from. I have always felt that drawing people was somewhat intimidating…so it seems like trying to draw a face a day might be a good way to get over that! Trying to stick with using my ballpoint pen.

Gifts

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Working on a little birthday gift for my husband’s aunt. She is turning 80 in May. Hard to think about what kind of subject matter would be best…settled on Lily of the Valley as this is the official flower of May. Difficult little buggers to get right! Fun to work on though.

Also messing around with oil bar paint on found beach wood. Thinking of moving on to shells, or back to the birds. Vacation week is coming to a close.

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Bird Week

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Somehow I got focused on the water birds this week. Feels like the right subject matter while at the beach. Someone pointed out to me that I keep cutting the poor birds beaks off! It happens a lot! For the next one I will try to keep the beak within the frame. I am really enjoying the paint transfer technique with the oil paint…and I have discovered how to make this work on canvas as well. The line is more difficult to control on the canvas, but still offers up a quality that I appreciate.

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Dreaming of the beach

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Taking a break for packing up my art supplies and I must be dreaming of my vacation coming up in the #outerbanks of NC. I took the resource photo for this painting soooo many years ago…I have been looking at it for a long time. Going through my supplies I found this blue paper and the old photo, and well, there you have it. I like the way the casein worked against the blue color of the paper, a little dry brush technique in areas created a nice effect. I will try some more of these. I think that the background needs more consideration, but a fun experiment (and break from packing!)

Looking forward to several days in a row of painting and drawing at the beach.

Repurposed

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This new expressive line technique seems so perfect for reinterpreting some of my past sketches. It’s difficult for me to draw the same thing again…even though I feel like that is probably a good approach for refining work. But, I tend not to want to do it. I stumbled onto this idea while looking for a way to “try” out the line technique and have discovered a way to explore the previous sketch in a new way.

I liked the way this turned out, I might try a few more in different color combinations and on different paper stocks. This linen type paper seems to work very well, gives some nice “bleeding” effects.

Line Expressions

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It’s been a marathon weekend of #sketchbookskool catch up! I got through my last 3 weeks in two days. However, I am still shy of the last weeks homework assignment. The last week is to sketch a “tiny adventure”. Unfortunately, I have run out of time for even the tiniest of adventures, so this assignment will have to wait a few days.

This particular session has really been my favorite one so far, lots of good ideas to carry forward in sketchbooks and finished work. I was kind of suspicious of Penny Dullaghan’s lessons at first…somehow I just didn’t think that they were for me exactly. But, I was WRONG!!! She gave 3 different lessons on how to achieve some interesting line work…creating ways where you have no choice to let the technique dictate the result (to some degree). I only tried one, but I love it. I plan on trying the others as well. I changed it up a bit…but the end result worked out really nicely.

So, this piece was created by slathering some water mixable oil paint onto a plain piece of paper and then placing my “sketchbook” paper on top, and then drawing right on top with an old dental instrument (she used a screw driver). When you pull it up, you have “transferred” the oil paint to the paper, but it reveals your line drawing (and some smudges that work nicely too). I then went back over it with some watercolor and colored pencil. I think this will be a fun way to revive some of my older sketches and turn them into something different.

Expressions

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Finally this weekend a return to my #sketchbookskool class. I have been missing it. This weeks lesson was great. The instructor is german and felt most comfortable speaking in his native language. This was actually really cool! It was subtitled of course, but I found myself more engaged than usual. Good lessons on watercolor washes and glazes. This guy does really great illustrations (here is a link to his website: Felix Scheinberger) fun to watch him and see his books.

The one thing I have learned from the lessons is with watercolor glazing you need to be patient and let things dry! I am probably more a fan of the washes, but the glazes are good to know about. A challenge for sure. Oh, and I did the under-drawing with a crayola crayon and that was AWESOME!! I love crayons, and the watercolor works great with them.

He has inspired me to tackle more people and faces. Always nice to be inspired.

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