He’s asleep

We both are tired out. I have a cold and I think he’s caught it off me. I decided to try and draw him in a simple drawing app. It’s more fun than sitting watching TV. I guess I must be starting to feel a bit better.

I must start going back to life drawing. I was doing it last year, then the nights got dark and cold and I stopped. I realise I’ve stopped doing a few things over the last couple of months. I don’t know if it’s the lack of sunlight or depression, but I feel a bit housebound. Trying to snuggle up and be safe. Life gets like that sometimes.

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Pre Christian Celtic Art

These are some of the illustrations I did for my  thesis on pre Christian celtic art from the fifteenth century BC to the first AD.

Sorry they are not beautifully photographed  but it’s 3.30am and I was excited because I found it and it’s the first time I’ve seen it for about 38 years!

I see now where I get my love of patterns from and that I could do some of these drawings now.  I don’t know where I started with some of them…. Oh the confidence of youth.

There are photographs in the thesis but I haven’t included them as they were taken by a friend. They are starting to fade but surprisingly the pen and ink drawings I did seem to have stayed stable. Probably because it’s been stored in a drawer…

Right. Bedtime I think.

Life drawing with Orme Art

I had the great pleasure of spending the day drawing my friend Eve when she came and modelled for us at Newcastle Fire Station. One of the art groups I’m in, Orme Art group had booked he as a clothed model for the day.

Here are my attempts at drawing her. The red dress was really spectacular and hard to draw! I felt really out of practice but I felt like I was getting into it more as the day wore on.

Parquet

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This is some old flooring which may be tiled. I don’t think it’s actual parquet flooring which is a type of wood block flooring. Usually laid in a herringbone pattern. The floor is then buffed to a shiny finish. I saw this floor somewhere in the recent past, and it reminded me.

We had a floor like this at the gym at school, and then in the life drawing room at college. I remember painting and drawing many models there and trying to draw the floor pattern from lots of different directions. It made the pictures more interesting and once you got the hang of it quite easy to draw.

Anyway I was doing quite a bit of life drawing early last year but things got busy. But I’m going to try and go back. I also want to learn some new drawing techniques. I think they have parquet on the floor in the hall where they do life drawing. Things do come round full circle.

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Combining drawing apps

 

The first three drawings are based on a drawing done in a kaleidoscope app. Then I changed them in picsart using the stretch/spiral tool and then the colour curves tool which allows you to change the hues and tones.

The fourth drawing background was done in ArtRage oils which is a free Google play store app. It was then drawn over with sketcher free which allows you to draw with different brushes. I used the ribbon option to draw a masklike face. The fifth drawing was a quick sketch of a face, drawn in a sketching app. In this case I used picsarts colour curves to change the levels of colour, then a stretching app to change the shapes. Finally I used a tool to create an embossed feel and then the mask option to layer up lighting effects.

I’m using my phone a lot of the time and I tend to forget there are more options on my tablet. Then today I realised that there was a drop down menu on the masks option, so I found a whole new section of the app to play with.

What I guess I’m saying is don’t be afraid to play with drawing apps, you learn more when you do, and you can come up with some really interesting ideas.

I used digital art as a sketchbook. I may not use it in the analogue world of oainting, but it fascinates me.

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Happy

Drawing in two apps, artrage oils and a sketching app. I just wanted to draw a happy face. At the moment my husband is playing with a toy helicopter and it’s not going well. He’s had it caught on the curtains and just gone in the waste paper bin. Meanwhile I’m trying to draw, and then write this. Hmmm… How happy am I … I guess OK, not unhappy, slightly annoyed. But relaxed until the copter comes rushing past my face  The batteries will be flat soon you only get 5 to 10 minutes flying time then it has to be charged for 30 minutes. In the meantime I will carry on Doodling. …

Can I add a link?

Check out the Sketch for Survival auction site. 

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I have an drawing on an auction site to support a charity which is trying to save endangered species. The drawing is of a mother and baby elephant. I wanted to add a link into the body of this post but couldn’t work out how so its posted at the bottom of this page in the comments section. If you follow the link you should also be able to find art by other artists also in support of the charity Sketch for Survival.

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PS thanks to Stoneronarollercoaster I now know how to do it. Thanks!

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.

 

Catlick

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I love the shapes cats make, even when they are having a wash…

Catlick, wash and brush up.

Preening and tidying,

Smoothing your fur..

Make yourself handsome,

Tidy your whiskers

Top to tail,,

Then your inner gymnast,

Turns you upside down,

Inside out,

Legs akimbo! (love those words).

Purrs escaping like a boiling kettle.

Shapes like a twister game.

You are my cat.

Beautiful and gleaming.