Sketching breakfast

If you don’t eat meat, look away now….

 

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If you can’t see what it is, I drew bacon about to be grilled, so I could make bacon and cheese oatcakes.

Today’s USK S-O-T challenge was to draw ‘cooking’. Various pots and pans and foodstuffs have been drawn. It’s keeping me occupied and mentally active.

USK stands for Urban Sketchers, its a world wide movement of people who draw their environment. The rules are, draw from life, not a photo, include background, not just the subject on its own. There are others but I can’t remember them all…. Anyway, I wonder what tomorrows challenge will be. X

USK S-O-T challenge….day 4

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Today’s challenge was ‘Entertainment’,

I could have drawn the TV or a computer or phone screen, but I just love the way the cat stares out of the window at the birds, he can’t go out, so he likes watching them. Yesterday a couple of pigeons were perched in the cherry tree. Sometimes when he’s washing he’s really comical because he sits on top of our bird food box, he only just fits. The windowledge is too full of houseplants. He likes eating some of them. This is his spot, he entertains me.

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Chore..

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Urban Sketchers Stoke-on-Trent is doing a thirty day challenge. Today is day three and the challenge is ‘household chore’ this is my sweeping brush as my hoover is bust.

Pencil in a Daler Rowney ‘simply’ sketchbook.

In other thoughts I’m trying to think of things to do. So far I’ve got as far as spending half the day looking at social media. I think a lot of people will be suffering from vitamin D deficiency and will look like they have recently been in prison!

Anyway, back to my chores…

Cheering myself up

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I’ve joined a group on Facebook where the idea is to post cheerful things, and not mention the virus.

One of today’s challenges was to post a ‘kettle’ view. I think I took it too literally, this is a view of my kettle.

I posted it, then saw beautiful pictures of kitchens, or views out of the windows of neat and tidy houses.

On a seperate page the urban sketchers challenge was to draw ‘working from home’ as I’m semi retired I’m not really doing that. Craft fairs and exhibitions are off for the time being, and I genuinely have not felt that creative this week. But I wanted to do the challenge, so I drew this. DSC_2386

Washing up waiting to be done..

It’s still waiting…

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Urban sketchers yesterday

The cat? He got in front of my sketch pad as I tried to take the photos of my drawings from yesterday. They are a large tree and workshop, a gate with a seated artist hidden behind it, and a stone figure half hidden in the bushes. These might make the basis for some new paintings as I work towards creating art for a new exhibition. I took a few photos too so I can use them to work out the colours.

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Quick drawing

Quick sketch

I’m trying sketching in an app called sketcher free, it’s interesting drawing with textured pens, but it’s not easy to control. This is drawn on a tablet, so the format of wordpress is different in it, not wordpress classic. I’m not sure this is going to work. Anyway you only learn by having a go at things, if you don’t try you never know if you can do it. I’ve found the categories tab but I can’t find the sharing tab . So at least I’m doing something , still not feeling well.

Cat sketch

dsc_2407.jpgI do like sketching in biro, you can get a good strong line, but by varying the pressure on the pen its good for shading. I have also found that by spraying the biro with hairspray you can sometimes get the ink to blur and bleed. If you are using black or blue biro you get interesting colours flowing from the lines. I guess it depends on the chemicals in both the pen and the hairspray. It might not always work. I have also used hairspray as a fixative for astel and charcoal drawings.

Did you know you can use milk sprayed onto charcoal or pastel as a fixative too? I found an old perfume bottle with an atomiser and used that to spray drawings. They might end up smelling a bit cheesy but it works. You just have to remember to wash out the bottle and spray after use.

ArtRage

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For years I’ve used an app called ArtRage oils which is free, but when I got this new tablet I decided to go mad and get the full ArtRage app. I’m having a lot of fun with it, new tools to use, a colour picker, and various other things to do. Now I just need to learn it a bit more so I can try and do  realistic art, and I have a stylus….that’s really much better than finger painting.

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Learning

Instead of just finger drawing in an app I’m trying to get a more realistic portrait using a Sketch app and a stylus . I am finding that using the stylus stops the slipping that makes more irregular lines that happens when I try to draw with my finger alone.

The drawing is being made up from the airbrush tool and I’m changing the thickness and opacity depending on the thickness of the lines I want to draw.

It’s again a work in progress so we will see how it turns out.

 

October challenge

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I’m still doing the drawing a day challenge with our group Stoke urban sketchers. Today I drew the corner of a £10 note, basically I need to do simple drawings every day the  Challenge runs. I’m mostly trying  to draw sketches of local places together with people when they appear on them.

One inch square is not easy. You need a fine nibbled pen. Careful observation, and care in drawing. I don’t know how easy drawing in a 1 inch Square is for people  but I’m definitely struggling.