Croquis café silhouette

This was remarkably hard to do - despite the fact that I was painting this from a Croquis Café photo, not a real life model (the cold was persistent, with the coughing worse when I was somewhere I felt I ccouldn't cough!). I'm happiest with the one at the top where I've managed a mix of negative and positive painting, despite the mistakes. I was inspired into trying this by one of the other artists at life drawing, and also by Wendy Artin. I think my conclusion is that this is way too hard for me!!

One Week 100 People Day 2

Croquis Café was a life saver on a busy day. I discovered their dance challenge section and I was in heaven! All the squiggly sketches were done live, with the pose changing every 15 seconds. And for the more elaborate ones, I paused the video to give myself two or three minutes per sketch! And I even got to try and add a few facial features!!

More exercises from the book

These ones were quick contour drawings. I should use a timer, as I tend to continue drawing for longer than I plan to. My goal would be to do lots of small 90-second drawings.

All models from Croquis Café.
The orange pen is a Marabu fineliner I got in Lidl a good few months ago.

Croquis Café - Artistic Physique

I love everything. And that can be quite distracting at times. I feel my energies have been quite dispersed lately, so I'm trying to get my life tidied up, in small ways at least. Rather than jumping around from life drawing to landscapes to urban sketching to drawing to watercolour techniques to florals to abstract etc etc, I'm going to try and concentrate on a theme/style for a week or two, then move to something different for another period of time. I know I would not be capable of sticking to one thing for the rest of my life, not even a month (unless it's a challenge!). That's not who I am. My only ambition really is to keep learning and become better. And the only end to that journey will be when I pass.

But I have been finding it hard to improve in anything as I could be working on three or four projects at the same time, not giving any of them the attention they deserved.

So for this week, it's drawing/painting the human body. It's not practical for me to go to life drawing sessions every day of the week, obviously. But since I've rediscovered Croquis Café, I can practise at home. All I need is half an hour a day, and surely that's feasible, even at this time of the year. Before I started, I did a tidy-up of my little art room (it's a very small box room and it gets messy very quickly).

The model for this session was called Artistic Physique. She is quite muscular, so it was interesting to try and show that aspect of her in my drawings. I used Derwent Inktense pencils and a little water to create shading. 

Saturn

Saturn is one of the models on Croquis Café, a very useful resource to practise if you can't go to life drawing class as often as you'd like! It's easier too, as it's 2D rather than 3D. Plus you can pause any time you want. Although I do try to stick to the times (1, 2 and 5 minutes). There are also photographs you can work from, which is useful for watercolour!

As you can see, I'm experimenting with different pens and papers. This is Posca markers on Two Rivers watercolour paper. And the face (no likeness whatsoever) is done with a Polychromos pencil.















I did the 1- and 2-minute poses with simple cartridge paper and Polychromos pencils. I enjoyed those the best.

I also tried a few other poses in another Two Rivers sketchbook I have. It's all cartridge paper and I've had it for a couple of years. I've used it a good bit, but I still have a dozen or so pages left in it. It's actually lovely paper - gorgeous with pencil and it can take a light watercolour wash too. I was quite pleased with how the drawing with shading worked out.

 I tried on a darker paper, but should have used a lighter pencil to make it pop more. I might go back to this one some other time.