Self Portrait

Another self-portrait done from a crazy selfie I took. I found that the pencil marks were a bit dull, so I added ink. A blue and Apache Sunset. That jazzed it up!

Bluebell portraits

Drawing more portraits of the lovely people at Bluebell Community Centre. 

This is Richard. He was quieter than some of the other sitters. But he looked straight at me and posed well!.

Eileen was very keen to get her portrait done. While I was sketching her, she made a friendship bracelet for me. She's bubbly and full of energy!

Davey! There is so much to say about Davey. He's a talented singer and musician. If you've never heard him sing, you're in for a surprise! He's also a very kind person, who is always thinking of others. He sketches with us on Sundays. I might have made him look a little bit younger than he really is!!

These are the original sketches done on location, and given to the sitters. I added colour at home.

Sktchy portrait

Embarking on my next adventures - portraits have never really been my thing. Through lack of skill more than any other reason, really. But I heard about 30 faces/30 days on Sktchy, a course with a different tip every day for 30 days, with 6 different teachers. And it was too good an opportunity to pass, despite January being a busy month. I might not get to do much watercolour work this month, but that's been the general trend for me in the last 3 months anyway, due to the presence of our wonderful kitten Sumi who likes to jump on everything, including desks with paint and brushes and water! He is starting to settle at long last. But I have to choose my moments if I want to play with acrylics!! Now if we can only get Timber and himself in the same room ...
So there was an introduction video by France Van Stone, a famous American-French Sktchy portrait artist, also known as Wagonized, with 4 useful tips. I watched the video first, then I watched it again and drew along. Frankly, I don't think I would have been able to draw this on my own, but following the video and drawing at the same time was a good way to learn, as I am no expert at drawing faces, nor cross-hatching.

The portrait is unfinished, as she ran out of time. I decided not to venture any further on my own, as I knew I would struggle and probably make a mess of it. That unfinished look works out quite well anyway, don't you think?

Clarendon Street Church and a few portraits

I did this preliminary sketch of the courtyard at the church off Clarendon Street. A beautiful place. I had never been there before, would you believe it! I was quite happy with my measuring and comparing angles and relationships. But then it started to rain and I decided to go indoors. And now I'm torn between leaving this sketch as it is, or adding ink and/or watercolour. I'm going to have to sleep on it until I can decide what to do with it. It's the last page of a sketchbook, so it's easy to leave it alone, but it could also be a good opportunity to try something, even if it doesn't work out, nobody will see it!

When I got indoors, I didn't really have a view that tempted me, so I sketched my friend Aideen. As she was sketching me too, she looks pretty serious in these. Not my best work, but it was good to catch up with each other and chat with another sketcher who was working at the table behind us. Sometimes, a good afternoon is not defined by the quality of the sketches, but just by how it felt at the time! It's always wonderful to meet up with Dublin Sketchers!

Apart from the eyes placed too high, this is probably the best of the three!!

This is how she will look when she's 75-80. She really is much prettier than my representation of her!

This was my last attempt. Maybe I painted my despair! 

Nose and mouth

Painting the mouth wasn't too hard, but the nose is still giving me trouble - I think it needs to be wider. It's wonderful to be exploring aspects of creativity without feeling the pressure to produce a finished piece, I have to say!!

Portraits with Áine

I was so lucky to be able to participate in a workshop with the wonderful Áine Divine! She is so full of positive energy and talent that I felt lifted to a higher plane! And she is a precise teacher, sharing her methods and secrets generously. It was wonderful to see her in action, stepping back and forth, her paint brush an extension of her arm, swinging gracefully in mid air and then committing a confident shape to paper. Plus she is joyful, the kind of person you want to spend time with!
I was really interested in doing her workshop because she paints contemporary watercolour, which not many people do, in my neck of the woods anyway.

Here are the two portraits I painted:

Siobhán

Ryan

30 days of Art with Áine

You all know I love a good art challenge! Áine Divine is doing a 30-day art challenge on YouTube (and a Facebook group) and I couldn't resist. It's all about fitting 20 minutes of art into your day, no matter how busy you are. I was a bit late getting started, but it doesn't seem to matter. Lovely community of like-minded people, supporting each other in their pursuit of art.

Day 1 - Self-portrait. I did mine using Viarco's ArtGraf Tailor shapes. A quick and colourful tool that I always mean to use more often!!

The Human Body - Drawing and painting techniques and practise

Always good to go back to a book when I need to re-centre myself. 'Drawing and Painting the Nude, A course of 50 lessons', by Philip Tylyer is the book I chose for this. I decided to do the exercises right from the start even if I find that some of them are very basic. Quickly enough it will be moving to measuring, and I'll be in trouble then. So I might as well enjoy the simple stuff. (I'm actually tempted to skip the chapter on measuring - I know it's not a good idea. At this stage in my life, I know that measuring improves accuracy. But I also know I don't like measuring! I want to move to the fun things, anatomy, colour, and all of that good stuff!).

Here is what I've done so far, over a few days:

Copying an Egon Schiele drawing - right side up

upside down

with a grid - interesting how the grid has more detail where the face is

Working with a viewfinder. Never liked it

This is the original drawing, by Egon Schiele

This is my copy, painted with white acrylic on a black canvas, using grid and negative painting. Hard work but the effect is quite beautiful

Continuous line drawing. I really enjoyed drawing that way. (PS: the stone was only there to keep the page flat when I was photographing the drawing, easier than bulldog clips

Blind continuous line drawing. I recognise myself in this. My husband doesn't

'Partial peek' drawing. My husband sees a likeness. I don't like it!

All along, I was trying different pens in the sketchbook I'm using for this. This was a Micron Pigma. It's quite old but I liked how its scratchiness worked on this drawing.

Skin Tones

After the frustration of colours not working out the way I wanted in my last Life Drawing watercolours, I asked a friend, the talented emmajmemma, what pigments she used for skin tones. I had been using New Gamboge (PY97), Quinacridone/Permanent Rose (PV19) and Cerulean Blue (PB35), on the advice of some very talented urban sketchers based in California. But somehow that mix was a little too intense for Irish and Eastern European skins. Emma's secret weapon, she revealed to me, was yellow ochre (PY43), mixed with PV19.

So that led to some experimentation and colour swatches. I found that adding some Buff Titanium into the mix can help me reach the paler colours without having to add as much water. And then Lavender (a mixed pigments paint from Daniel Smith) to create subtle shadows. Daniel Smith's Lavender is a favourite of mine. I use it a lot in Irish skies (with Buff Titanium actually), so I don't know why I hadn't thought of it sooner for skin tones.

So, I've made the necessary changes to my skin tones/life drawing palette and I'm all ready to test it in real life!

The colours in my palette are, clockwise from top left: ultramarine blue, yellow ochre, potters pink, buff titanium, lavender, new gamboge, perylene marroon, monte amiata natural sienna, PV19, pyrrole red, burnt sienna and cerulean blue.

And while I was at it, I tried a little self portrait, testing a number of red pencils I have. I found that the Faber Castell Eco works nicely for drawing and it stays steady with watercolour on top, and on the paper on which I tested it at least, it doesn't repel the watercolour, which some pencils or pens can do!

Self Portrait

Since I've stopped going to the hairdressers to get my hair coloured, I don't get a chance to sketch self-portraits these days. But then, I decided to take the opportunity while I was doing my own hair colour. The environment isn't quite as salubrious as in a hair salon, and I didn't have quite as much time (as I have to clean the sink and the colour bottles before I can start drawing!). Plus it doesn't really look like me. But practise is practise. Even if the result isn't brilliant. And I have a few sketchbooks I'm trying to finish, as I want to get back into the habit of having just one sketchbook where I document everything!

Portrait warmup

I'm going to have to take a break from this one. The few attempts I've made have failed miserably. And the more I try, the worse it gets. You'll have to believe me, as I'm not going to share all the really bad versions. I promise I'll paint a better portrait of you, Emma. Just not yet.

Quick people sketches

Back in time. These are two sketches I did in Blackrock while chatting to fellow sketchers. One of them looks ten years younger, the other ten years older. Done in Firmo Diário Gráfico with a Zebra brush pen.

ArtGraf portrait

Drawing family is not easy.  But I think I've managed to catch something of my father in this drawing, using the ArtGraf tailor shape. I wonder what he'll think of it?

Trying out new toys and techniques

Lots of goodies in our goodies bag from the sponsors of the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Porto. I'm not good at trying out new things - I'm just worried I will want to go and buy more! So I'm trying to set the new pens and sketchbooks aside and start using them when I'm finished ones I've already started using.

Instead, I'm trying to focus on practising techniques I've discovered while in Porto. Mostly about gesture drawing. So I dug out an old book I have of nude poses, and I tried them out.

I filled a brush pen with ink and water and I set to work. Many more thousands of hours of practise before I reach a satisfactory level. But you know me, I get lost in the doing, never mind the result!

Here I moved to a lovely watersoluble marker from our goodies bag, the Marabu Aqua pen Graphix. Everybody got weird colours. But I like what it does. It's on my Amazon wishlist already! I want all the colours!

At this stage, I was a bit fed up working from a book, so my husband, absorbed in a book or his phone, more likely the latter, was a willing model.  The first attempt was done by just looking, not thinking. For the second one, I used the technique I learned at the NCAD for portraits. I'm quite pleased I actually remembered to use something I learned recently!

Double Portrait

From two drawings done by another artist. I don't really see myself in these, maybe because my face rarely looks that serious. But it was a very useful exercise. I like my nose on the left-hand side!

I must do another one with my new hair colour - that will be a lot less tame - my Diables Rouges look!!

Life Painting

After drawing, painting, from a drawing or from life. I like it more from life - you can't beat the energy of a life model! It was tough to find the patience to get the drawing right first before jumping in with watercolours, I have to admit.

Done from two drawings. A bit stilted.

Done from life. Drawn first, then painted. This one looks a little brighter in reality

Also from life. This one needs a little more work to lighten some of my darks, particularly between the model's arms and her chest.

I had done my homework on mixing skin tones, and I had a blank sheet of watercolour paper beside me to test the colour before applying paint to paper. All good lessons learned.

A quick portrait of one of the other students. Her skin is actually quite pale, but it was a hot day and we were all sweltering!

Life Drawing

Went to a Life Drawing and Painting class recently. Learned a lot from Tadhg McGrath - loved every moment of it - I felt so energised by it! A lot of measuring, which is not my strong suit, but a very useful skill. And also working in charcoal - using the willow charcoals I bought years ago - at least 14 years, I'd say! One thing I didn't know about charcoal - apart from the fact that it keeps forever - is that you can rub it off with your fingers as well as with a standard eraser, so it's a really quick tool to use. We had two wonderful life models. As for the portraits, we practised with other students, which was tough, as I was trying to capture a likeness, something I'm not renowned for!