Drawing for the Sake of Drawing

After a long break between semesters, our life drawing sessions started up again today. We had a great model, and since I was late, I took the odd back space behind the lights. It turned out to be a wonderful spot, I got some great poses, and worked in my Raffine sketchbook (which is terrific). I have tried using gesture and mass drawing, but I seem to return again and again to contour drawing. It seems the most intimate to me, touching all those wonderful lines with your pencil, and if you don't get it right, you just make a new line. There wasn't enough time for shading, so it's just pencil and line, 15 minute poses. It felt soooo good to just draw again. Thanks for looking.

Lakeside Painter

Oil on Canvasboard
8" x 10".
This is my first landscape attempt from yesterday, not quite good enough for the Everyday Painting blog. So I put it away and started over, got a painting good enough to be posted there. Something about the foliage is really evading me right now, so I'll just plug away at it, and hopefully do a couple of sketches of my fruits and veggies too. Thanks for popping in. Any critical comments are welcome, hints and helps for painting trees?

Colored Pencil Drawings

A lot of the EDMers are working right now in colored pencil. I mentioned to my little support group that I had done some dogs and cats in colored pencil some years back for a company named Pratt and Austin, located in Holyoke, Massachusetts. And they wanted to see. So the following several posts are some photos of the work I did. I tried here to show the detail in the pencil work, and how little strokes can be built up. Thanks for looking.

Red Kitten with Detail

Red Kitten in Colored Pencil. The detail shows the pencil strokes.

Puppies

A couple of pencil drawings of puppies. I tried to include a close-up, so that the pencil strokes can be seen. Thanks for looking.

Colored Pencil Work

Dogs in colored pencil.

Challenge 101 Burt's Bees

Our EDM challenge this week is "soap."

I love the Burt's Bees product line, their shampoos and lotions, shower gels and soaps. All nice stuff. So this was a good excuse to pick up a couple of their little soaps from the sample bins at CVS. Pen and Ink with Watercolor in the new Raffine sketchbook. Thanks for looking.

Raffine Sketches

A little deviation from the fruits and veggies. My future DIL was feeling poorly enough to warrant a trip to the E-room last night, and I brought along my new Raffines, anticipating the usual waiting time. (They couldn't find anything seriously wrong, she still isn't feeling well, so home today from work.) There were a few other folks waiting, and I tried some sketches with both the Kuratke brush pen, which is wonderful, if a bit scarey, so much committment, and the water soluble graphite pencil. Brought water brushes along, so was able to swish these a little. There were others, but here's a sampling. I'm very, very happy with the Raffines. The paper is heavy, but toothy, enough of a surface to make them delightful for wet media, or dry. I'm definitely hooked. Worth a try, if you're an EDMer. Thanks for checking in.

Red Onions Walnut Ink

Since I was doing red onions in oil, I decided for fruit and veggie sketching to use the same onions for a quick pen and ink drawing. Walnut ink is such a great color; added some water, using a reed pen here, along with a drawing nib, and a watercolor brush. Thanks for popping in.

Swiss Chard Watercolor

More January fruits and veggies. Does anyone eat swiss chard? What is it anyway? I bought a bunch because of the lovely magenta veins in those magnificant leaves, but never have tasted it, or known anyone who cooks it. Hmmm. Done in a very loose watercolor style, with new Daler Rowney watercolor pencils and big brushes. A little white gouache to bring up the white veins. Thanks for looking.

Challenge 100 Landscape

Oils on canvasboard, 12" x 16"
Butler's Orchard, November

Our plein air group was scattering fast, as the clouds rolled in and the wind picked up. I was packing up, but decided to snap a few pictures before calling it quits. Pulled out the photo today, and went at it. I didn't capture the lacy quality of these trees, but I think I got some of the feeling of the "lowering" sky and darkening day. Thanks for stopping.

Beets Two

January fruits and veggies. I hope you don't get sick of them, by the end of the month. Another version of the beets, which are now in the oven, since my cookbook tells me they are best baked, covered and in a little water. Don't you love the color of the stems on fresh beets? Beautiful leaves also, with those purple veins in them. Anyway, another stand up, and use a big brush painting, going for the shapes of the veggie. Watercolor on cold press 140 lb paper. Thanks for looking.

Beets One

January Fruits and Veggies. Beets with watercolor and Staedtler permanent marker. This is a stand-up-and-use-a-big-brush painting, a round sized 20, for those of you that use watercolor, and no, it's not a Kolinsky, or even a sable brush. (Can you imagine the prices?) I was tryng for very loosey-goosey here, and strong values, plus the neat color of the beets themselves. Very fast painting, but I like it. The second one was also done standing up, going for more the shapes of the beets. I keep forgetting that everything is reversed here, when I talk about first and second versions. Done on Arches 140 lb watercolor paper. Thanks for looking.

Avocados in Watercolor

January's theme for my drawing is fruits and veggies, very doable, so I put it first. I've finished my daily painting, and this was a fun quick study for the themed work. I bought Rober Wade's DVD, Wade's Watercolor Solutions, and in it he shows how to do dry brush work (it's a wonderful DVD, by the by) so used that technique here. I think it works on the center and left avocados, while the right one (maybe a drawing problem?) looks more like a mini-watermelon. Oh, well, two out of three isn't bad, and I am happy with the shadows. Done on 140 lb. coldpress Arhes paper. Thanks for looking. Keep sketching, everyone.