Christmas cards

One thing I do love is getting Christmas cards. I wish I’d got addresses to respond to some of them. They arrive, and I can’t always find the address to respond. I had a letter off a good friend earlier in the year. I wrote back, but lost the original letter. I can’t address a card to ‘my friend’ ‘North of england’. I don’t think it would work like it does for ‘Santa, North Pole’.

I’m not putting up any decorations this year except for the cards.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year to you all.

Landscape

I love playing with things as you know. I add textures or add colours, mirror things or duplicate them. Art is exciting. Not every image is good, some work, others don’t. But playing with things helps you learn new things. Scientists experiment, that’s how they changed from Alchemists to chemist’s or physicists or biologists or mathematicians. They took things and learnt how they worked. That’s basically what I hope I do. Maybe not as logically or not done in an organised way, but I try.

Drawn wreath

Drawn in Sketch app

If you want to you can try and draw images with various tools on an app called Sketch. I used an ellipse tool and a symmetry tool to centre this drawing and guide the curves in it. I used leaf shapes and flowers shapes adjusted to different sizes and other pattern tools like stars for a bit of digital glitter. I used a spray gun tool to add shade, using the ellipse and symmetry to get the shadows under the leaves, then added a darker layer of leaves. I added a bow shape with a marker pen tool. Finally I added a circle around the wreath drawing to add a bit of definition and added Merry Christmas on top. I did this twice, first with a darker colour then white, slightly offsetting them to get a shadowed effect.

Horse in snow

For as long as I remember I’ve drawn horses. I used to read horsey books. I’ve only ever sat on a donkey when I was a child and I’ve sat on a horse and been led on a walk a couple of times too. Sitting up on a horse gives me vertigo, and I certainly don’t think I’m built for it. But that said, I do love horses.

I used to draw them all the time when I was little. My bedroom wall was covered with either drawings of Asterix the Gaul, Elizabethan men and women wearing ruffs and dappled grey horses. It was always dappled grey. I used to watch show jumping on the TV (horses jumping over fences) and looking at the way they moved. I got so good I even sold one for sixpence when I was at junior school….. I felt really guilty!

Over time I have stopped drawing them as much, but sometimes I just have to draw them…

Drawing after Bob Ross

I was just watching a programme with the artist Bob Ross, he was painting a winter scene with autumnal colours and snowy highlights, so I decided to draw as I watched. I’m trying to get to understand my different drawing apps. I don’t think I did too badly, I just about managed to keep up and this took me about half an hour.

I am not sure I can get the whole image on the screen. Because I’m using a different device I seem to be into block editor mode….that’s better….

Quick sketch

Fifteen minute sketch, #skyportraitartistoftheyear. I just tried drawing Carlos Acosta in mid air. Bit scrappy, charcoal pencil…

The winner of the competition, Curtis Holder is doing a ten thousand pounds commission portrait of Acosta for display in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

I wish the sitters were set up so you could watch TV and paint or draw them, it’s an enjoyable programme.

Eddie Izzard drawing

Just watching#skyportraitartistoftheyear Eddie Izzard was the sitter. Found a reasonably close image to what they are painting today off the Internet. I haven’t worked out how to find images of the sitters on the Web page. I must be doing something wrong. Anyway this was a quick 25 minute sketch. Using a unipin 0.8 black fine line pen. Which was running out