Quick sketches (life drawings)

Posted on July 2, 2022 Posted in Fine Art, Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Drawing, Fine Art, ink fine line pen, Life drawing, Model, Pencil crayons, Sketching4 Comments

Warning contains nudity.

A ten minute and fifteen minute sketch I recently completed at a life drawing group a few weeks ago. Looking at them now I can see that the details are not correct, but not too bad. The leg lengths on the second sketch are definitely too short. You can see how I tried to extend them a bit. When you draw a figure it’s a good idea to work out where to place the head. If you are too low on the page you run the risk of losing the lower half of the figure as in the first, ten minute sketch. But these were swift sketches, drawn on pale brown Ingres paper which is suitable for the mid tones then drawn in black ink fine line pen and shaded with pencil crayons.

One thing I hate with life studies is when artists leave the head off. Especially when it’s a female study. To me, they may not be able to draw facial features, but by leaving the head off it makes the figure look more like a slab of meat, disturbing and disrespectful of the female model.

Tour time

Posted on July 2, 2022 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Doodle, Drawing, endurance, Sketching, three weeks, Tour de France, TV coverage, Yellow JerseyLeave a comment

Over the next three weeks the Tour de France is taking place. Its an annual bike race like the Giro D’Italia or the Vuelta d’Espania and on a slightly smaller scale the Tour of Britain.

These bike races challenge cyclists of the world to race their way round mountains and plains, to fight their way through crowds and over gruelling roads. In heavy rain, even snow, or sweltering heat.

So many well known names in the cycling world have held the Malliot Jeun (yellow Jersey) such as Eddie Mercxx, Geraint Thomas and Chris Froome for example. I hope I’ve spelled their names properly. It’s certainly a spectacular sports event. There is a lot of expensive equipment and amazing feats of endurance (plus some drug scandals). I’m looking forward to the final day on the Champs Elyssais In Paris (pardon my spelling).

Growling!

Posted on July 2, 2022 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Acrylic on canvas, Art, Dragon, Fed up, Pottery, saucer, stomach, Tired, unwellLeave a comment

I’m trying to find a gentle way of explaining how I am feeling today. My stomach is growling like a dragon in a bowl!

I don’t know what caused it, but I did put some slightly ‘off’ milk on my porridge a couple of days ago because I thought it tasted OK. One of the problems of losing my sense of smell several years ago means my taste perception is not very good. For instance I can’t smell burnt toast. And I wish I could smell the scent of night scented stock. Its so long since I really smelt flowers properly….

Anyway, I’m babbling on, ignore me! Stomach cramps make me feel fed up (pun intended). Hope the dragon calms down soon, I think I will have a nap.

Part of my book

Posted on July 1, 2022 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Book, final project, hope to publish?, Illustration, ma, picture book, swimming dragon4 Comments

I’m not going to share my whole story, but I thought I would show you a couple of pages of my Swimming Dragon book now I’ve passed my MA in illustration. I wanted to do a children’s book with the story pages looking like black and white lino cut prints and the opposite pages in full colour patterns that could represent dragon scales or other ideas. The idea was to give children a look at abstract, complex art and pattern, together with an adventurous storyline that would lead them through the book. I want to try and get a spark of creativity released through the book. I hope this makes sense. I hope I can work out a way of publishing it.

Linocutting

Posted on June 30, 2022 Posted in Cat, Sketching, UncategorizedTagged Art, Arts and crafts, Black and white cat, Cat, Life, linocut, Printing, Tuxedo cat5 Comments

I’m going to do some cards using this linocut for a craft fair I’m thinking of doing. I wonder if this is to quirky and should I try different colours. Perhaps gold or bronze instead. If I also get envelopes it might make an interesting card. I hoe cat lovers will like them.

Lake

Posted on June 30, 2022 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged #bandofsketchers, Art, Drawing, Lake, Reflection, Silhouette, Sketching, Walking, Water, Westport lakeLeave a comment

Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was Lake. This is a drawing of Westport Lake from a photo I took on Tuesday.. The sky was quite dark and overcast so it gave it a very atmospheric feeling. The silhouetted tries look good reflected in the water. This is a felt pen sketch of it.

Deleting photos.. Again

Posted on June 29, 2022 Posted in UncategorizedTagged 1%, 100, 99.9%, Art, Editing, Full memory, Illustrations, Images, Photos, removedLeave a comment

I have just deleted 1% of my photos on my WordPress account. Because I had reached 99.9% of images on my media… 13 gigabytes of pictures! The only way to add images is to delete old ones. So if you find a post I have written without an image you know why!

Since I started this blog a few years ago I have always tried to add images of my own to illustrate what I’m describing. I’ve tried to limit them to one’s that were not as good, a bit confusing or untidy. I hope readers don’t mind. But unless I do this I won’t be adding any more images!

Wide eyed

Posted on June 26, 2022 Posted in Sketching, UncategorizedTagged #bandofsketchers, Art, Black and white drawing, Black ink pen, Drawing, Eye, wide, wide eyeLeave a comment

Sundays #bandofsketchers prompt was wide. I could have drawn a wide mouth, a wide vista, a wide stretch of water. Instead I decided to draw a wide eye! It’s just a quick black and white ink sketch. Nothing much to explain other than that.

Hay-fever

Posted on June 26, 2022June 26, 2022 Posted in UncategorizedTagged Art, fields, Grass, growing up, Hay, Life, Nose, Pollen, running eyes, School, sneezingLeave a comment

Today is dry and windy. I might go out later but the pollen count is very high. I’m allergic to grass pollen. It started when I was a child, I would wake up with ‘sleep in my eyes’ gunged up with mucus. Then I did a painting in situ in the school playing fields, I was drawing and painting a van dumped on the field. In the week it was there I sat and drew it most lunchtimes. By the end of that week I had full blown hay-fever! I think it was because the grass was really tall and was distributing pollen.

Nowadays there are much better antihistamines, eye drops and nasal sprays. Thank goodness, the situation without them would be horrible. I walked past a garden full of overgrown grass a few years ago and I could not breathe! Sneezing, running eyes, all of the symptoms. I had to buy hay-fever tablets straight away to calm it down.

New work

Posted on June 25, 2022 Posted in Fine Art, UncategorizedTagged abstract landscape, Acrylic on canvas, Art, Colour, Dorothy Clive garden, Fine Art, Orme Art group, Painting, Today, Work in progress10 Comments

New painting, based on the lower photo of Dorothy Clive Garden waterfall. I’m working from a filtered photograph of it that has added texture to it. I will try and post an update later. I was trying to find an image to work from for the afternoon at the Orme Art Group today. I was worried about the yellow and green and purple colours, are they to muddy….? But now I’ve started adding a pop of red in places I’m happier. It is something that is making me happy, so I will carry on.

Mallaband-Brown

Tag: Art