Life drawing and two announcements

The announcements first I think Dave and I are now engaged to be married! Actually he asked me two weeks ago but I now have my ring back from the jewellers (it was resized) so it feels more real. We are so happy. And happy with the ring too – it’s an antique, Victorian, which means we avoided the blood diamonds issue and it came from a charity so the money we spent went to a hospice. Good all round, I say.

And the second announcement is that I am setting up a website – I’m using wordpress as my content manager so the front page will be a blog and drawing diary will be moving over to the new site. It will be renamed though. I’ll leave this blog up however, as I wont be transferring all the content. This means that updates here will be a little sporadic until the new site is live.

Waiting

I was in town with Dave on Wednesday – or rather, he was in town, I sat in a cafe for most of the time – after we’d done the errands which needed both of us anyway. I didn’t do much sketching being way too hot and way too tired (we’re having a heatwave here and us poor Brits are just not used to it). I did try doing a continuous line drawing with my brush pen though:

i founf this more difficult with a brush – the fibres are so flexible it’s almost impossible to tell whether the brush is hitting the paper or not unless you are looking. Consequently the direct response drawing I tried was a complete failure – most of it wasn’t even there! I had just drawn it in the air.

Anyway, I did another but with my fountain pen:

And rounded off with a portrait of the first chap with the brushpen. I didn’t finish it though:

It looks set to be a hot weekend – I hope you all have a good one and happy Independence day to all you Americans out there!

Pierre Bonnard

Pierre Bonnard

This was an interesting exercise – it’s based on one I found in Charles Reid’s book The Natural Way to Paint.

Firstly I did a continuous line drawing (which CR, confusingly, refers to as a contour drawing) of Pierre Bonnard from the photo in the book. Then, as Reid instructs, I squinted at the photo to see where tonal boundaries are strong, and where they are almost indistinguishable – I then erased the lines which divided the areas of the same or similar tone. Then I mapped out the areas of tone and added hatching.

Because I was working on brown paper I then finished with some white. Because the photo had little tonal variation, but I was working on brown paper, I found it almost impossible to give an accurate rendering of the tones, nevertheless I like the overall effect – despite the inaccuracies in the original drawing (I didn’t make any corrections when I was erasing lines).

Reid’s book is interesting – I like his approach – I also like the fact that he spends some time talking about brush handling and delivering paint to the paper – which he seems to do rather differently to many others. If you like loose watercolours with plenty of wet-in-wet techniques and would like to explore painting figures I recommend it.

This Weeks Everyone Can Draw Challenge…

…is to use something to draw you don’t usually use. I got out a brushpen for this. I do use this to restate lines in other drawings but it’s a long long time since I did a sketch with one. They are quite hard to handle – designed for Japanese calligraphy the brush head is long and very flexible. Of course this is also what makes it a joy to use – but I certainly need some practice to get the wonderful line variation Russ Stutler talks about here.

Bathrobe

This is Dave looking suitable oriental in his bathrobe.

When I get a little more comfortable I’ll see how some continuous line and direct response drawings look with the pen.

Red Bathrobe

I added a quick wash, though this is not the best paper for it as you can tell!

More Scenes from Swedish Outdoor Life

I’ve had rather an eventful few days but I’m keeping quiet for now!

Here’s some sketches anyway

Mr G

Direct Response, details added afterwards.

Mr G was the former King Gustav’s ‘tennis name’.

The Once Future King

A rather frightening drawing of another King also called Gustav. Mostly direct response but i forgot and peeked a couple of times.

Meeting my own challenges!

The challenge at everyone-can-draw this week is to sketch out ‘in the wild’ and I have been lax recently at participating, (which is bad since I’m supposed to be setting an example) so today I went into town for an hour and sat in a well known coffee place to meet the challenge. I could only manage an hour – I’m just not good at the moment, energywise, but lucky for me the bus picks me up outside my door and drops me off there too! I only had to walk a few hundred yards once I was there. I sound like an elderly woman, don’t I?! Well I have the (prematurely) grey hair…

Ruminative

Contemplative

A Man and His Son

The top two aredirect response, and the bottom one was supposed to be but I forgot halfway through and started looking at the paper. I added the brush lines and white pencil at home, later.

He’s so handy…

my love. He can do all sorts of things, including, as it turns out, splice rope. This is a direct response sketch of Dave splicing new rope handles onto the wicker laundry basket on Saturday afternoon.

I added a little watercolour wash but it is all too pale for my taste.

Dave splicing rope

Just some quickies

I went into town this morning and did a few quick sketches whilst I had a cup of tea – all direct response.

Monumental

I love the way the girls small head and large body make her look monumental, like a statue or a goddess.

The Thin Friend

Shortly after I drew the large girl her skinny friend arrived.

It's a Rum Old World

These two seemed to be contemplating the rum nature of all things.

Looks like the weekend may be fine here in the UK, hope you have a good one!

Just Dave again…

Last night I sketched Dave quickly whilst he was reading. My concentration wasn’t too good though: I have ME and tired doesn’t even begin to describe how I was feeling but the desire to draw was warring with the fatigue so I went with it.

Dave - Direct Response

Dave Reading

I was going to add a little colour to this one but after 20 minutes of drawing I’d had it and went to bed!

Three Pears and a Sari

More painting – in fact I did this the other day and didn’t post it. I didn’t quite achieve what I set out to do – paint someting bold, spontaneous and naive in style.

This was the result:

Three Pears

Well maybe I set myself too many aims! I certainly lost the spontaneaity and simplicity once I got to the pears. The fabric is a beautiful Sari originally from Malaysia, I believe.

I’m in love with the brilliance of gouache colours though – they also look great in reproduction which is handy.