So for two weeks I am going to try my best to stick with the #20MinutesADay challenge. I am on day TWO! So far so good. I decided to work on portraits as I am still trying to get better at that. 20 minutes seems to be just the right amount of time, not to little, but not too much! I am hopeful that I can keep it up.
Maybe I will develop a good habit!
I must be easily influenced! One of my friends mentioned interest in Horseshoe Crabs and off I went to work on Horseshoe crabs. Never would I have thought to do a painting of this particular sea creature. But, it was super fun! And, I learned a little bit about them too. I am going to do a series of 3. One more to do. I actually love their shape and design. These lent themselves to the encaustic medium as a finish…and the addition of white broken shells. Both of them are done on cradled birch panel, using a combination of oil bar, watercolor and casein, encaustic and the found natural shells. Lots of fun! I just have to decide the color scheme for the last one!
Along with doing quick simple faces I want to be able to do a more finished drawing. This started with leftovers (I hate to waste paint!) I had painted a blue(ish) ground on my strathmore toned paper…then had some left over acrylic paint that I decided to squash on there. Over that I decided to paint some watercolor…which looked interesting…kind of like a stain. I thought, well, this might be a good surface for graphite.
I am not sure about it. The graphite went down smoothly. But, I felt like I couldn’t get the darks as dark as I wanted. Maybe I just needed to control the ground more in areas. I think that the effect is interesting though, will try again!
I have been trying to finish this one up for a couple of weeks. Fish drawings for my husband! I was doing a lot of birds and he said, how about some fish! So, this is for my husband John.
Our plow guy takes out our house marker (or mailbox if up) every year. Another one bit the dust this past winter. Here is our new sign, found wood on the beach, painted in acrylic–atlantic salmon seemed a good choice for a coastal Maine house. We’ll see how long it lasts!
Still working on my faces. Work in progress today–taking more time than I normally do.
I am still doing a face a day…but some don’t turn out as planned. This was from a few days ago, since then I haven’t been happy with any of the others. I guess I am going through a rough patch. I always feel like outside factors (like stress or feeling overwhelmed at work) shouldn’t influence the drawing–but they seem to!
But, I will keep going!
This one was done with ballpoint pen in my everyday journal. I downloaded the Adobe Draw app which looks like a great way to add color to my sketches. But, it is different than my computer version and will take a little getting used to
Still having fun with #sktchy app!
I am finding the great thing about #sktchy is not just the endless photo resources, but learning how other artists are using their photo resource. So many folks do such a great job of really just being inspired by a photo–you can tell that they used the image, but they really used their imagination to create something entirely different! This is something I want to learn how to do!
This is the first time I felt like I deviated a bit from the original image. The resource photo of the girl was great, and somehow she reminded me of a gypsy girl! And, I felt like she need to be looking out of a window with shutters. So….I am happy with this re-interpretation of the image. It’s not a perfect likeness and I have changed her hair and the surroundings. I am going to try and do more work using my imagination!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Art Projects 