Looking at glass

I was talking to a fellow artist about drawing and painting glass. We discussed whether it has a blue tinge like water but I disagreed. I suggested he looked at the reflection on glass. Sometimes glass is tinted slightly, uranium glass for instance is yellowish, I said I thought it depended on what is added to it when it’s manufactured. I think if you were to put a glass and a plastic bottle next to each other as an exercise and draw what you see you would probably notice stronger reflections on the glass. Also look at shadows, glass, though usually transparent, throws a shadow…instead of using blue to define it I said try using a bit of grey. Observation is very important.

Missing Barndances

Next month we would probably have been holding a Barn dance in aid of the Penkhull Mystery play (that didn’t happen in July). We would also have started rehearsals for the Penkhull panto, both events, ( the mystery play and the panto) had big audiences. Now our government has decided to cut the number of people who can live in England down to six both inside and out. No more crowds. Sad….

Sea images

Which do you prefer? I’ve used a friends photo and duplicated it as it was a interesting image. These are a couple of the resulting ‘layouts’. I do not intend to use these for anything other than an example, so I hope my friend will forgive me. If there is a problem I will delete the photo or use a stock photo to create a similar effect.

Sketching challenge, Glass.

band of sketchers challenge

Todays challenge was to draw ‘glass’. I decided to do something colourful and as I like experiments, I drew in my Sketch app.

I tried to build up layers of colour using the spray paint tool first of all, then an eraser for the label and then paint brush tools, fountain pen and a text tool. It’s a bit wonky donkey, but I don’t think it looks too bad. I used a stylus to try and make neater marks. I might do a few more like this. I’m enjoying these challenges.

Rabbit or Hare?

Sketchfu was another site I drew at. More sophisticated than Youdraw. It closed when the owners decided to send more time on another website. Lots of artists drew there. I made many friends and we did various challenges like copying photos of objects, but I also liked the freedom. You could also add to other people’s drawings. So it was almost like a joint animation. Like everything else in the world, things change, they never stay the same.

Proserpine

Youdraw image

Youdraw is a website that used to rely on Java script but after a while of being down its started up again. The area you draw on is only an inch by two inches in portrait orientation. You have a thick and thin black pen and a thick and thin eraser. But despite the limitations if you played with it you could thin the black lines or reduce the eraser marks. I did thousands of drawings there as Christine M-B. I’ve done just a few since it’s started back up. They are trying to collect 500,000 drawings. I copied a lot of my drawings and added colour to them.

Another youdraw I did.

Tree spirits painting

Painted a few years ago. Each dot of paint chosen to fit together and the branches and twigs manipulated to form faces. This was actually based on a photo of a tree up at the Croft at Penkhull, when the sun was setting and the sky looked like it was on fire. But I had to embellish it. I really like finding ‘spirits’ in my art. Sometimes I paint a subject straight, without playing with it, but other times I let go. This was one of those occasions. It might not work for you, but it made me very happy when it was finished. It went to a new home. Wish my photo of it was better.

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Today’s challenge ‘Soft’

The second challenge set by our new sketching group ‘band of sketchers’ was ‘Soft’, not easy, until I saw my cat sitting in front of a big soft bag. Plus a mat she was sitting on. Its a pencil sketch with some black ink fine line pen work. It’s hard drawing moving cats. They have a tenancy to shift position just when you want to draw their eyes, or the position of their paws. I could have taken a photo but I wanted to draw direct from life.

Spode window.

Spode window

I’m in the reflection, you can see my fingers holding my phone in the bottom right hand pane of glass. Acrylic on canvas. Approx three foot by two foot. Painted a couple of years ago and exhibited at Spode and The Waiting room gallery at Longport. I’ve not painted much for the last six months because of covid 19 and doing my MA in illustration. But I know I need to paint again. I don’t want it to stop. I will be planning to paint more images from the Spode site. I love industrial archaeology. I hope to celebrate more of it in paint.