New paintings and regular art updates.
Cat
Why can’t you look at me?
why won’t you stay still,
always moving,
except when you sleep….
Even then you chase mice.
feet flailing,
galloping across dreaming gardens,
or hazy, cobwebbed fields.
Cat, statuesque,
gorgeous, flexible, strong,
you won’t keep still
and be drawn.
Urban sketchers Stoke-on-Trent new challenge, a task you love.
I am trying to plant up hanging baskets, but I only have a few plug plants, and a bit of compost to put them in.
Luckily some of my plants overwintered and are regrowing, so I have a few fushia plants, a lobelia, and some trailing plants with pale purple flowers that is in this basket. I’ve put a few begonias in the pot hanging below it.
I put one basket under another to get a tiered effect. Usually these are full of plants, now I’ve done two with tumbler tomatoes which you put in baskets and as they grow they hang down for picking.
Yes these are tasks I love. X
I’ve been playing with a sketching app on my tablet, I haven’t used it very often, so the results are very experimental, I just tried as many pens and brushes as I could, some of them are difficult to work out. I decided to do something bold!
Today for our virtual sketching visit we drew Trafalgar square in London.
Every weekend Stoke-on-Trent Urban Sketchers chooses a venue to draw from and this week was a view of Trafalgar Square with the National gallery and one of the famous lions in the foreground. The image was taken from Google maps and each sketcher drew it or another view of it. There were about ten artists drawing and sketching or using ink pens, some of them were using watercolours too. At the end we had a throw down (a digital view of all the drawings). An enjoyable couple of hours.
X
Today’s challenge for usk Stoke was to draw my favourite footwear.
I don’t own many pairs of shoes. I’ve got these banana yellow ones, but I haven’t worn them in yet.
This drawing was done on an app called ArtRage. I got the pro version last year as a birthday present.
The drawing is difficult because the colours mix on screen and it’s a bit like painting in liquid butter with a stick, as I was using a stylus. I found getting the size of pens, pencils, or brushes hard, as the size goes from very small, to smallish!
Anyway after faffing about for a while I managed to get a reasonable representation.
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DAY 6 in the new Urban sketchers Stoke-on-Trent challenge. I used gold glitter and purple pen to cheers this up. I should have let the glitter paint dry. It clogged up my 0.5 ink pen. I used permanent black and purple pens to draw and add shade…. Noticed I’ve got a lot of egg cups and extra mugs tucked away in there.
“Cupboard” isn’t the most inspiring subject, so instead of drawing cans I decided to draw crockery, pots, glasses and egg cups.
X
Funny what pops up on Facebook memories. I don’t exactly remember when I did this, or how. I know how I duplicated it.. But I don’t remember the process of getting to there. I think this is a few years old. It was a quirky idea. Drawing Spock. It must have been when one of the new series of Star Trek films came out?
Xg
Urban sketchers Stoke-on-Trent day 5, draw inside your shed or garage.
Where do I start. In my case our shed has had all the tools expelled to the outer darkness of our little shed. Instead some rickety pasting tables have been put up. The tops are covered with boxes, lengths of train track, bits of trains, engines, train trucks, stuff…. Plus he’s got different controllers to send power through the tracks. The pasting tables are so warped it’s like the trains are running through hills!
Then he’s got his bike bits, wheels, and a box that the stray cat sleeps in, which is surrounded with bags of straw… I’m allowed in as long as I don’t mess with anything… In the meantime he wants to upgrade things when the lockdown is over. We are going to buy some better tables. Exciting eh?
I drew this last night. I interpreted my wire fairy as a real one (with embellishments). I wanted to get the picture to look like one of those adult colouring books. I drew the outlines first with a thin black pen, then I shaded it in with spectrum noir coloured metallic pencil crayons. I finally outlined the fairy with a slightly thicker and darker black ink pen. Drawn in a Windsor and Newton heavy weight case bound sketchbook. A5 size.
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Today’s challenge was breakfast. Unfortunately I’m setting the challenges and I didn’t get up till almost noon! When I finally did break my fast it was two pm. Apologies to any vegetarians out there. But I’ve got to say bacon butties really taste nice when you are hungry.
My drawing was with a black felt pen, then coloured in with blue, red, brown, yellow, green and purple felt pens. The USK challenge is getting a few participants, its enjoyable to draw every day and having set themes makes you think!
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Mallaband-Brown