Working on a drawing

Portrait of a friends nephew. I’ve just started it using a dark grey pencil crayon. It needs some more work and I will try and include some of the background to make it more cohesive. I need to work on the shading. If I squint my eyes I can work out the tonal range. Clearly the forehead needs darkening on the left hand side. I’ve only got today and tomorrow to finish it!

Blue doodle

Or is it turquoise? Drawn in ArtRage oils. Finger painting on my phone. One of the challenges with drawing on a phone is if you don’t use a stylus (I can’t find mine) and the tools on this app means the colours smear together. I do have ArtRage on my tablet. That’s the pro version with many more tools but my phone is easier to use as it’s not as heavy on my arm.

Birds

Multiple bird images drawn ib black ink fine line pen. I tried to fit the shapes together. Clearly I can’t compete with Escher and his wonderful tessellations, but it was fun to try and think about how the shapes fit together. I looked at patterns as well as shapes, so each bird is an individual. They all seem to swirl round each other.

Blue roses

Another Sketchfu. I think that there would be a reference photo and artists at the site would try and copy them. These roses must have been put in dye so that it would be sucked up into their petals. I’ve also seen multicoloured roses and other flowers where the stems are split so different sections get a different colour.

Chocolate orange

Another Sketchfu drawing from the now closed site. This is a picture I drew from memory about ten years ago. I used to love eating these at Christmas. I think it was probably a challenge to draw something sweet. Strange how some things suddenly became fashionable but then lose their appeal again. I don’t think I would buy one now.

Friend

A friend reading at Etruria Industrial Museum. The orange area is the ink from the previous page showing through. I did this with a brush pen so it works slightly differently to a fine liner pen. Dark areas fill in better than with a thin pen. I might add texture in Photodirector later. It’s great to try and switch things round and explore different ideas. Practice in anything improves what you do. I’m also trying to teach myself a bit of lino cutting. More of that soon.

Sculpture /planter

A metal squirrel climbs up and birds perch on this sculpture at Trentham whilst plants including tulips grow in the planter. 15 minute sketch while we were at Pieminister at the retail Village. I could also see butterflies and a spider. I decided this is an example of art nouveau or that sort of style. It’s made up of four sections bolted together.