Band of sketchers first drawing

New challenges

A ggrou of us have decided to keep running sketching challenges but not in our local urban sketching group. This is because not everyone sticks to the urban sketchers rules and we were also clogging up the gallery with some strange and interesting images, but not necessarily outside.

Today’s challenge was distance. I saw some people have drawn landscapes with far away landmarks, but I interpreted it differently….. I in my case I drew my friends back yard. With plants growing up the wall and in pots at the rear of her house. First of a new set of ideas….

Owl

Drawing from 2007

Clearing up my photos on my phone I decided to delete and optimise them. It jumbled up the ones I left behind. I loved drawing this on the sketchfu website that has since closed so don’t go looking for it.

I love owls, we have visited owl sanctuaries and animal sanctuaries. I just love the patterns on their feathers, and the fact that most of them fly silently. Their eyes are amazing. Staring at you like they are pinning you to the ground like a small rodent!

Doing mythological

and why not…? If you’ve got a dragon, why not go all unicorn… I tend to draw dragon heads a bit like horses heads. Unlike the dragon in ‘how to train your dragon’ where toothless the dragon reminds me of a black cat.. I digress. The app I used to create this is called something like free sketch? The trouble is I use so many of them that I don’t always remember which one I’ve used!

On this sketch I tried using a fountain pen, but for some reason it won’t make marks? This is why I say experimenting is so important. Learning how to use a tool in an app so that you can understand what it does.

I’m just getting the hang of it…

Found an app I could use….

I love doodling and experimenting so the dragon has been morphed a few times in my picsart app. Its still not quite what I was trying to do, but I’ve called this piece “dragon dance”. They seem to be having fun!

I could imagine something like this in a children’s book…crazy little characters all with their own backstories… born from the same clutch. Golden and silver, neon and harlequin…, some bigger than others, I don’t know…I will have to think of a story to go with them.

Dragon…

You know you are bored when you start doodling dragons. Not very good ones at that. I was watching a film, the desolation of Smaug and this came out of my head. My only problem was I drew it on my tablet, which isn’t synced to my phone and some of the apps on one are not on the other, so I have drawings on one device I cant access with the other one unless I take a screenshot for instance. Also wordpress is presented differently on each device. I guess because they have different manufacturers. So this was going to be a lot more complex and layered. I might do more……

Last challenge with USK Stoke-on-Trent

It had to happen, after sketching since March this year we have decided to end posting sketches to the Stoke Urban Sketchers page on Facebook .

The thing is that not everyone that joined in is from Stoke or its surroundings. And not everyone wants to draw the challenges, so our pictures may have cluttered up the page a bit. So now we are opening a new page.. It should be up and running in September. If you like sketching and feel like joining pop over to Facebook. I will get the details and post them here.

In the meantime today’s prompt was ‘kitchen’ I decided to sketch part of the kitchen from the living room. I ache too much from my long walk earlier to stand up and draw the full thing!

Drew the box…

Today’s #uskstoke challenge was to draw something to do with restrictions. The box is being posted up to Lancashire with a bike frame as we can’t deliver it directly to hubbies brother. So I think this counts? Pencil sketch, 6b, on an A6 cartridge pad. Tried to do the writing on the box as neatly as I could. X

Fish patterns,

Fish drawing in permanent inks. Patterns in the water, scale patterns on the fish. I left the edges blank but I think it might look better if I add more or crop the image closer in. I do know I have a style of drawing. When you move your hands it follows a certain pattern, I sometimes try and fight the way I do things, but if I imagine something it usually comes out similar each time. Faces generally look left, three quarter faces look towards the right. Horses heads look left. I think it’s because I’m right handed? Maybe it is because I draw left to right, the same as writing?

Lizard

Hitting the wrong buttons again… So for some reason I’ve got this list of categories above. I have no idea how to delete it!

I was going to talk about my digital drawing of a lizard. I’d originally just drawn the background but decided to add this because I liked the idea of camouflage. It was drawn at a now defunct website called sketchfu which closed a long time ago. It had simple tools, but I could draw what I wanted to. Freedom in art is wonderful!

Open and Closed

Urban sketchers challenge today

Poor Galdiolus stalk got snapped off in the wind. So I rescued it and put it in an empty fish shaped bottle in some water. Today’s challenge was open and closed so I think the open and closed flowers fit with the prompt. I’ve added the fence and flowers in the background. Using pencil for the sky and trellis. A few hanging baskets and houseplants finish the drawing.