Emotion

Todays band of sketchers prompt was emotion. I tried to draw myself doing an evil laugh. Permanent marker drawing. I was drawing by the light of a standard lamp to excentuate the shadows on my face. It’s a bit scruffy and odd because some of the pens are running out and it was difficult to differentiate between the colours on the pen tops. I wanted to say ‘Grr Argh!’ which was the sound that was at the end of Buffy the Vampire slayer programmes, oh yes I was a Buffy fan.

Potbank and canal Roses

Painting, acrylic on canvas, from about three years ago. This is loosly based on the yin yang symbol. The blue is for water, the canal runs next to a lot of potbank, it was used to transport pottery around the country. The flowers are meant to represent canal Roses. They were a design that was used on metal objects on canal barges, like pots and tin watering cans and jugs. They are also painted directly onto the barges as decoration. The potbank shape curves round and is sometimes held in place by metal bands.

Ginger beer

Digital sketch I drew in my old version of photoshop. I really ought to get the new version. The one I use was published in 2002 but I’m very nervous of changing because of the cost and whether I would still understand it. Maybe I should look into it instead of umming and ahhing. I need to find out what advantages it would give me. My old photoshop is glitchy, when I get near the edges of a drawing it suddenly will only draw straight lines at 90° to the sides. It never used to bother me, but as I use it more it bothers me…. Anyway enough moaning….

Autumn woman

Acrylic on canvas from five years ago. I get so excited by colours and patterns, sorry its a bit blurry. I don’t have the painting anymore. I think I did a second version of this, they both sold. I wonder sometimes whether I should do more paintings like this or are they too abstract/not abstract enough….

As people who know me know, I enjoy doing various things, that’s why I call myself an explorative fine artist, and perhaps an illustrator.

Can you tell?

It’s Yellow… The colour for today’s #bandofsketchers prompt.

Is is the heater we have on in the living room to boost the warmth. It’s usually a cat magnet but they were not playing today. We do have a large wooden cat but I have accentuated the colour of it and made it larger to increase the line of yellow that runs through the drawing.

This was done with felt pens and permanent marker pens. I wonder what colour we will get next.

Spooky

Take a photo of a crinkly motorbike cover, shade areas to make a face appear. Use the spray brush tool and a colour picker tool in a drawing app to match in shapes and colours. Add shapes using various pens like chalk or wax crayon options if you have them in your app. Then change the filter to a more black and white/ sepia effect. Finally use a filter to make some areas more fuzzy than others.

Voila you have a spooky, ghostly figure.

Another Sketchfu drawing

This was a favourite drawing I did at Sketchfu, I can’t remember if it was a challenge drawing or just something I decided to copy because I liked it so much. I enkoyed trying to show the sunlight penetrating down through the water and catching the Orcas back. Its a bit sketchy but not too bad.

Water changes the colours you see, and the deeper you go, the more towards the blue end of the spectrum the colours become. Reds and yellows fade away as you go deeper, until the blackness in the depths of the water absorbs all light. It is at those depths that you start seeing the dim glows of Angler fish. I actually think it would be fascinating to go down in a submercible and to see some of the otherworldly wonders, but I dont think I ever will. But I can use my imagination…

Cherries

Digital ddrawing of cherries I did at the sketchfu website years ago. As you probably know I used to draw there a lot before it closed down. This was one of the challenges we did. Different artists would draw from a photo someone would have posted for us to work from. It helped get me used to drawing digitally. I wish it was still going although as a moderator there it was sometimes hard to cope with some of the things people wrote and drew!

Cat fish?

My friend gave me this. A hand painted ceramic cat with fish on it. One fish seems to be biting the tail of the other one, both they and the cat seem to be happy and smiling. There seems to be a sea shell below the head of one of the fish. Perhaps this is a fishing cat? It’s a flat back ornament with no decoration on the back. I think it’s sweet, naive, simple, a bit rough round the edges. But fun.