Tag: Pen and ink

Pre Christian Celtic Art

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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

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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.

Portrait session

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We had a lovely sitter tonight called Debbie McAndrew. She is an author and play write and also sometimes acts. She wrote a brilliant play called “dirty laundry” that was on last year . It was set in the past and was about the history of the potteries.

We had an entertaining session drawing her and discussing all sorts of things, including how she got into the theatre and acting and how the group got into drawing and painting.

I really enjoyed the session and think that I got some relatively accurate portraits from it.

I used pencil, charcoal pencil and black ink to do the drawings.  The sketches are in a small sketch book with good thickness cartridge paper.

I like drawing in these books. There is enough room to fit the drawings in, and they are small enough to hold so that it is not a struggle to hold the book. Other people were using A1 or A2 sheets to draw or paint on but I prefer the smaller size. About A5.

Anyway I shall just leave you to decide if you like them…

Lifedrawing

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Tonight’s life drawing model was called Richard.

When I’m feeling out if sorts I like to go to life drawing. I can sit and draw without worrying whether the picture is saleable. I suppose I could frame up some of these but I don’t really want to.

I find nowadays that my eyesight isn’t as good so I look through my glasses at the model,  then over the top of them to see my sketch, half the time my glasses are slipping down my nose, which probably looks comical.

I tend to use a small sketch pad but if I go for a4 or bigger I use the back of a chair to rest it on. I used to use a donkey at college…a long thin stool you sit astride with a rest that pulls up which you can lean your sketch pad or drawing board on. the advantage of these is you can be seated without having to mess about propping things on a second chair.  If you use a large easle its generally easier to stand up, as the legs of the easle can get in your way if you sit. Drawing on a flat peice of paper means that when you lift it to the vertical the image stretches and ends up elongated, this does not look good when you are doing figure studies.

Anyway, going back to the class, I did 7 drawings tonight…they call me prolific!

 

 

Wednesday pen and ink studies

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I did not have my soft pencils with me last night..I was drawing at the life study class I go to on Wednesday evenings.

So I used a fine knibbed ink pen instead. It made shading the figures more difficult, using more cross hatching than I would do usually.

I also had to solve the problem of sketching in a small, square, sketchbook because I could not find the one I usually draw in. So for the standing figure I turned the paper at an angle so that it fitted in across the diagonal of the paper.

I recently was given an old book of anatomy for figure drawing for student artists ( I will have to check the title)… the drawings look so old fashioned and precise.  I’m afraid my eyesight these days prevents me from being as accurate as I used to be, and sometimes I get the proportions of the figure wrong.

A case in point is a small painting I did of this model in acrylic on canvas. I decided to block in the colours first, because she was sitting on a vibrant red/pink cloth and there was a yellow carpet and floor, with strong diagonal staging behind her.

Unfortunately I ran out of time on this. I may try and make her head larger as clearly it is too small.

I quite like the composition. The diagonal angle of her body contrasts with that of the stage.

I will continue to draw and paint figures. It helps to work out how people are “put together”.

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The painting is too sketchy. I dont know whether to shorten her legs or her body as well as enlarging her face. It’s a conundrum which I want to solve. But not today.

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