New paintings and regular art updates.
Why do cats like sitting and or lying on things? This is a blue carrier bag with a couple of fish on it saying save our seas, I think he just likes it because its soft. He also likes the washing basket, my rucksack, a cardboard box or two, the arm of the settee, and especially my hubby’s clothes when he’s got undressed ready for bed. The cat sleeps wherever he wants.
View of the fire escape stairs across the road. We live opposite a pottery and of course it looks industrial. The superstructure allows people to come and go at various floors. The doors are always open in hot weather and sometimes people stand on the platforms during hot weather. They have gardens and trees around the grounds. At least they are trying to green the area.
ArtRage oils sketch, edited in Sketch app. 2019. Digital drawing.
I like editing things in one application and then running it through one or two more. In a similar way to using different filters on Photoshop.
I have used lots of different apps over the years but I don’t always remember what I did in each of them which is why they look different each time. I want to find the best selection of drawing tools that I can. I hope they look OK.
Digital doodle, using the Sketcher app on my phone. Instead of lines I used a tool that creates small oblong. Then a ribbon tool for the whiskers. Using a pink background and a dark green pen tool makes an interesting colour combination. With delicate lines I think it gives an ethereal effect.
Our prompt from band of sketchers today was wood, so instead of drawing some brown furniture I decide to draw the trees outside including a pear tree, buddliea, pine tree and other trees, lots of wood. Our garden is a thicket! I hope you can see it OK, lots of leaves. The pears on the tree are growing larger every day. X
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.
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.
June, before all the leaves had grown on the trees. View out the kitchen window over the main garden. Usually there is a cat in the way but not on this day. The bird feeder on the window didn’t get used. I guess being stared at by an interested looking cat isn’t a good thing when all you want to do is peacefully eat some sunflower seed kernels. This view showed the ripening cherries on the tree, gone and eaten a month later. X
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.
Yes I know its not a building, it’s INSIDE the building. I’m our living room. It’s still bricks and mortar. Anyway it’s the corner with the DVDs and Videos, an old hi-fi system and a lot of books and stuff. Amazing how media and technology changes so much. But not everyone is able to afford replacements. So it’s a case of watching things till they wear out. Anyway that’s the corner of the building I drew. Black ink on cartridge paper.
Mallaband-Brown