Plant - sunshine at last!

We've had a grey, cold summer so far. And now the days will be getting shorter already! But there were a few hours of sunshine here and there. Which I tried to capture.

Laundry again

A little bit wishy-washy, literally! I strengthened the shadow on the ground afterwards, and actually made it worse. I'll spare you that one.

Tea bag

Inspired by a video from Anne-Laure Jacquart, I tried to paint a tea bag using negative space. It doesn't look quite as good as the video demonstration, but that's why she is the teacher with the YouTube channel!!




One of the things I noticed afterwards was the tiny little bit of white that she leaves at the top of the teabag and at the top of the tea inside the teabag. That makes a huge difference. And also she seems to be able to paint the space around the plate without thinking about it, whereas I struggled with the shape of it from the start. But a very useful exercise!

A plant in ink with a stick

Losing track of the days. Is this 12? I meant to go and buy an orchid, but didn't in the end. So here is the same plant I did the collage with. Sticks in the garden were too wet (plus my dog pees on them, so I can never look at a twig or branch the same!) and my only bamboo pen doesn't work for me. So I used a bent-nib fountain pen instead.

Still life with a painting

A painting with a still life setup. Day 9 - I found this one hard to do! The idea was to use a reproduction of a painting I like or admire or that inspires me, with a few items to make it part of a still life. Well, I really didn't feel up to copying a famous painting. So I decided to tackle (still watching the rugby IRE 3-7 ENG) one of my paintings instead, using some vases with a family history.

This one proved more than I could chew though. I had chosen a portrait I had painted recently, but I was putting myself under too much pressure, and I'm not too happy with the result.
So I picked an easier painting (one of my monoprints) and another family vase. And it all worked out much better.

Complementary colours

Day 7 - I chose red and green

I do love orange and blue too, but I decided to try green and red instead. Favourite teapot and mug. Acrylic ink applied with a bamboo pen that doesn't really work, Neocolor, and a little watercolour for the background.

My studio

A good location to practise Edges, from the SketchingNow course. It was my studio, my office or the kitchen. The kitchen is not my domain. And the office is far too messy at the moment!!

First version - a 5-minute brush pen dynamic chaotic rendition

Second - it took a bit longer, but no more than half an hour I'd say (I do lose track of time when I'm drawing, though, so I'm not 100% sure). Done mostly in pen too, but this time I drew a few setup lines in pencil first, so the overall result is more in proportion (look at the curve of the desk). I tried to highlight the important edges with a thicker line. I probably could have been braver. And things on my desk have changed, as I was busy preparing Christmas cards.

And finally, a watercolour detail, drawn first with watercolour pencil, and with some pen lines added to the major elements that interested me. Someone asked me what the pink object and the red bottles were. Here is what I replied "The pink thing is a punch to cut out big circles (about 4 centimeters in diameter) – I use it with Gelli prints – they look lovely on cards. I was using it last week to make circles for this year’s Christmas cards!    The little orange jars are little plastic bottles of mango juice that I use to carry my water when I’m urban sketching – I bought them in a local supermarket in Porto. I had seen an urban sketcher (Suhita Shirodkar – check out her work – she’s amazing at capturing people!) using one at the Urban Sketchers Symposium and I thought they were the best little water containers, as their neck is quite wide and they are completely spill-proof. They came in a pack of three!   So that’s the significance of these items, and the reason why I used a heavier line to bring them forward!!"

PS: my studio is actually a tiny boxroom, and believe you me, it's hard to keep it tidy, but the two items shown in these sketches, the chest of drawer and the kitchen trolley, both from Ikea, help keep the clutter under control!

Brush pens - quick sketches

Doodling at home. A good way to fill in blanks in the day without investing too much time!

He moved three times while I was trying to sketch this, hence the strange lines criss-crossing the drawing! (Pentel brush pen)

My favourite tea pot. (Marabu watercolour brush pen - I got these in Lidl - I wonder where else I can find Marabu supplies in Ireland? I would love to get my hands on the white Art Crayon!)

Our growing gherkin plant. I might try to add a dash of water to this sketch and see how it behaves on the Firmo Diário Gráfico paper.

1st painting and 1st sketch

After a big high, I often hit a little lull. In this case, a week of coughing and bad nights' sleep. But it was worth it. I'm now picking myself up and getting back to work.

So here is the first painting and the first sketch I've done since I got back. It's a start.

If in doubt, sketch what's on your desk. Always works. Love the little cups that Cathy gave me a few months ago. They keep reappearing in my sketches. And I had to include the little round fruit juice bottles I got in Porto - they were pure mango juice. But I didn't buy them for the vitamins, but as water containers for urban sketching - sturdy, not brittle, good wide opening, non-leaking. They look better than urine sample bottles too. The only disadvantage is that the bottom isn't flat, so you can't use blu-tack to attach them to your board. Not sure how I'm going to square that circle yet. Must talk to my McGiver husband!

A fairly plain landscape. But good for practising looser trees. That tree is actually very very big. It stands proud in Marlay Park.

My desk

If I can think of nothing to draw, my desk is usually a good candidate. It's full of junk, whose configuration changes constantly. The main challenge for me is the bottle tops - ellipses continue to resist me.
Do you see the little guy sitting on the box? He is a Body Kun, or probably a cheap imitation. Well it was cheap, and it took forever to make its way here from China. And it didn't have all the accessories (guns and swords and the like). I would have liked a Body Chan instead. But the website wasn't very clear about what the product was. Well, although he loses an arm every so often, he's pretty good all the same. I must try and draw him better next time.
I'm in a little bit of a "I have nothing to draw/paint" rut. I'm determined to work my way through it. But the lure of Netflix and Facebook is strong.

Lost

Why is this ink sketch called lost?

Because summer is lost
Because my flowers look lost
Because the background is lost

Because I feel lost
In space
Because my mind goes wandering around
Generally not very deep

Just because that was the prompt for the day
And I had fresh flowers to paint
Orange
Pretty
And I had always wanted to draw that vase

And these flowers are still standing

Hungry

I'm skipping the odd day in InkTober, but overall, I'm trying to stick to it - just 10 minutes every day. I am enjoying finding things to draw around me, without having to think too much about it. Mostly I am using a Lamy Safari pen and I use a waterbrush to create the blended greys. I am using the prompts from the InkTober website, but only fairly loosely. Well, in this case, it was appropriate enough for the subject I picked.

And in case you're wondering, it's a tiny little plate, with just one wafer biscuit from Marks & Spencers Belgian biscuit set. I was showing true restraint. Normally, I need to eat 3 or 4 at a time, which is isn't bad, considering how delicious they are. And they remind me of my childhood. And it's currently two for the price of one in the shops, so I'm stocking up.

Foundations Lesson 4 Constructing Volumes

It's a couple of weeks since I got a chance to work further on my assignments for this online course.
We're now getting into the more technical stuff, and that's slightly intimidating - maybe that's another reason for my procrastination!

The whole idea is to draw with a light touch (or a light watercolour pencil if, like me, you're incapable of a light touch) but confidently, looking at every line and every angle carefully and drawing what you see. And then to draw what you actually can't see: the whole volume of the books at the bottom of the pile - this technique helps you to figure out where your angles and proportions are wrong. Once you're happy with everything, and only then, you draw the viewable lines in pen. And that's where I went off the script a bit - some of my books are too small, but I didn't realise that until the whole thing was finished. Too late to fix it. But unless you know the books, it won't really matter. Or so I keep telling myself

PS: and in case you're wondering what the little green and turquoise round boxes are, they are pan-pastels! 

watercolour pencil drawing

with final lines restated in ink

Next assignment is to draw a chair in a public place. Scary stuff!! How long can I put it off??

Shapes - White mug

Part of the Shape Challenge is to draw with shapes and colour, without using a pen, for a week. But I just got a new pen! A Lamy fountain pen. And I love it already. So it's going to be hard!

So this page has half pen and half shapes

Maybe if I look at it from this angle, my mug won't look too short?

Foundations Lesson 3 - Shadow Shapes

I really enjoyed the next section of Foundations' Lesson 3. The assignment was to paint the shapes of 3 objects and then to paint the shadow shapes. I found Liz Steel's advice really useful: 

• Place a piece of cardboard behind your still life. I know, that sounds obvious, but for years, I've tried to paint these objects with the mess of my desk as a background. A simple background helps to see the shapes!
• First, draw a thumbnail (I know I know, Liz is not the first person to give that advice, and I should always do a thumbnail before I start painting something, but I keep being lazy, and then I end up painting the same thing 5 times over because it doesn't work out the first 4 times!)
• Place the shadows on the thumbnail - that's really important if you're outdoors and the light is changing while you're painting, and by the time you're finished, the shadows have turned around and I'm really confused about what's in the sun and what's in shadow
• Then, use a light-coloured watercolour pencil to draw the shapes. 
• Then paint the local colour of each object and of the background. 
• Then paint the shadows, using a nice mix of ultramarine and transparent orange, without worrying about cast shadow or reflected light or any of these difficult concepts!

I like how my still life worked out!

Foundations - Lesson 2 - bottle and box

I need to do a few more of these, but I was happy with how the bottle worked out!

Maybe I should practise my drawing when I wake up at 4:30 and I can't go back to sleep, which is not something that normally troubles me. Or maybe I should have had a drink from that bottle - Oh I remember, it's empty. Plus I don't drink. 

I did this drawing in a sketchbook I started well over a year ago, and it was the last page of it. Something really satisfying about finishing a sketchbook. I shouldn't start so many in parallel. But I need different paper for different media. And I just can't do all these practise sketches in a "good" sketchbook. It's not in my nature! 

But it was lovely going through all the old pages. It was quite a big sketchbook, with basic cartridge paper, so it's mostly pen or pencil sketches, a lot of them not very good. But there is also a whole section in gouache, when I was doing my Fake Journal in April. (I must pick up my gouaches again, and set them out on a plate before they set in the tubes). And it's nice to see that I do draw better now than I did when I started that sketchbook. I must dig out some really old ones to see what my drawings looked like ten years ago! Or maybe I'll have to dig further, because I just found a drawing I did in 2006, and it's pretty good, and you must be wondering how it is I haven't improved since then (putting it nicely - me, I put it down to social media distractions - I can't blame the EU, although it seems that's what most of our politicians are doing these days). I must dig out my Betty Edwards book to figure out head proportions again!

008 - Draw your art supplies

I extended the brief of this one to drawing a full corner of my art room.

And what is it shouting out at me? DE-CLUTTER ME! It will be another few days before I do that, as I need to keep access to the radiator clear for another few days. So that means more clutter than less for the moment. But I won't let that stop me. I am determined to keep making art, maybe not Art with a big A, but anything that entails pens and paint will do for now!

It was good fun, and I'm really happy with how it turned out.!

Sketches in Bruges and Brussels

Life has been busy! Busy living and sketching, so no time for blogging. Hard to find the balance!

So, without further ado, here are my sketches from Bruges and Brussels in early August. All done in  a pocket-sized Moleskine book (with heavy paper, but a paper that doesn't take watercolour well, it's like it can't absorb it).

Some of the pages are coloured with Montana markers (I have four colours - I love the sky blue and the sunny yellow. The red and navy are not so easy to use in sketchbooks. I have a page painted navy and I need to dig out one of my white pens to draw something on it.). I like colouring pages first so it's not a blank page anymore, and you'd be amazed at how much of a difference it makes in terms of getting started with a drawing.

006 - Draw a stack of books - watercolour

I had enjoyed that little drawing so much that I decided to try it in watercolours. I used cheap watercolour paper (a block of 100 pages, Goldline, Watercolour Studio Pad, 200g/m2, cold pressed, about A4), but it worked out beautifully, with a Rotring ArtPen (not waterproof) and a new Sennelier travel set (isn't it so dinky?).

I used very little water, as I didn't want the pen ink to bleed all over the lovely colours. I'm delighted with the shading and the little darts of colour.

006 - Draw a stack of books

I am sticking at it - I get the feeling that this week won't be so good, but I've done quite well through the month of August so far.

I'm intent on getting to the end of this sketchbook - it's a nice size - about A4. But the paper is not very strong, so not ideal for mixed media and definitely not suitable for wet media. I used it with gouache and it was lovely for that, though.

Here I had drawn a square with a yellow Montana acrylic marker and I drew my stack of books - more or less - within that frame.