Drawing Animals!

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Opaque watercolor and graphite

Opaque watercolor and graphite

Loved this week’s #sketchbookskool lesson. This is one that I know I will go back and read through many times. A week was not enough time for me, but I will enjoy going back and doing these exercises again. The first part of the homework was to draw from taxidermy or from figures. I was lucky enough to find some nice little Panda figurines in the hardware store to use as reference. I am looking forward to going to either a natural history museum or to our Portland LL Bean for drawing from taxidermy. Next time I draw these I will make sure that my view point shows the other two feet–he looks a little flat without the other feet! Panda’s are hard to draw! But, they are super cute and I found myself really happy to be looking at these and drawing them. Bonus!

Next part of the homework was to draw live animals. Much harder. Thankfully I have a dog and a very handsome one at that. And, he is pretty slow and loves to sleep. Even with a slow and sleepy dog, they aren’t reliable and they move! I will keep working at it, it was a lot of fun. Really helped with observation skills.

Graphite on paper. Big dog sleeping.

Graphite on paper. Big dog sleeping.

Drawing for nothing

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Opaque watercolor, colored pencil and white paint marker

Opaque watercolor, colored pencil and white paint marker

Discovery of the week: it’s good to just draw for yourself! That is how the onion came about. I needed to try out my new white paint marker, so I had to have a subject. My friend Paul brought us these beautiful onions, along with many other wonderful heirloom vegetables from his garden. So, I grabbed one, did a color background and started drawing. I just finished some shells with a background and used graphite…which I like fine, but it didn’t seem as bold as I wanted. For this I decided to limit myself to a dark green and dark blue prismacolor pencil and then white paint marker. I am really pleased with the way the materials work.  I put this in my “No Fear” sketchbook, so of course it turned out great. I didn’t really care what happened….somehow I need to trick myself into this for everything!

Next #sketchbookskool assignment is to draw from figurines or taxidermy. I don’t have access to the taxidermy, so I found these great little pandas to work from. I found them at the hardware store of all places!

pandas1