Quick sketches from the car on a rainy day

Bank Holiday Mondays are always a bit dead. We never seem to do anything special. And the city was emptier than usual in the morning. We did see one American tourist couple wandering like lost souls. All shops closed, restaurants and cafés only doing take-away, museums and galleries closed. And it was raining. Thankfully, as of today, things are re-opening gradually. Mostly everything by appointment. And the traffic is getting heavy already. Soon, we won't be able to go beyond our neighbourhood for our morning walks. That's the price to pay for freedom.

Back to that rainy morning. Brendan had brought something to read in the car while I did two quick sketches. Pen only. Not looking like much. Well, just the ghost city that was in front of my eyes. I added watercolour when I got home. I'm itching to be back sketching with friends again. I just have to be patient for a little longer. It's hard. 

Life Drawing - Maxime

 Another fabulous model with Dublin Drawing - Maxime. Beautiful twists and poses and great lighting.

More Fable the Raven videos

 More videos of Fable the Raven! Such a cutie!

Soundscape

One of the exercises from Laura McKendry's course on Domestika is to listen to the sounds around you and draw them with your eyes closed. I had fun with Heavy Rain and Fable the Raven on YouTube. (video below). I added colour over my initial marks, but you get the idea. I recommend you listen to Fable the raven. She's a wonderful bird and chats a lot!

Crows and ravens from videos

Another page inspired by Laura McKendry's Domestika course. This time working from videos, looping them and trying to catch the action. And learning lots about crows and ravens. And this gorgeous raven called Fable.

I think I got one drawing I like out of the whole page, but that was worth it for it alone!!

Abstract colour exploration

I discovered a lovely abstract artist on Instagram @evakalien and I decided to try out what she does, making it my own at the same time. It was very meditative. And also a good way to explore colours. The one at the bottom is just colours I like, but the one at the top started with a lavender blue-violet. And then I looked on my colour wheel for split complementaries. And then I mixed the blue-violet and the yellowy orange (or the yellow?, or both?) and I got this lovely greeny neutral. It was fun. And I must do it again when I'm trying out colour schemes!

Stones would play

I'm not sure why I decided to start drawing in the middle of the sketchbook spread? Maybe I wanted a bit of variety in my layout? It actually looks quite nice in reality, but it doesn't photograph very well! I spent a meditative time painting these stones that I had in my stash and layed out on my desk. Most of them are probably from Killiney Beach, maybe a few from other locations in Ireland. But I never labelled them, so I can't be sure where! I did bring back a good few stones to Killiney Beach last year when I did a Kon Mari of my art room. But I clearly decided to keep the pretty ones! It would be interesting to see the result if everyone who has gathered stones from a beach brought them back together!

Crows are hard

Seagulls are hard, and crows are hard. OK, birds in general are hard to draw. But if you do a lot of them on a page, you don't really notice the duds!! This page was inspired by Laura McKendry's course on Domestika. The idea in this piece is to work from photos, but lots of different photos and not spend long on each, so you build a library of images of what you want to draw. Well, I was thinking I don't often draw animals, but crows, ravens and magpies are really interesting to me. They're so clever and beautiful. I must do more of these (adding to the collection of things I need to do more of!)

 

Impressions from the seaside

Gathering little impressions while on a walk in Dun Laoghaire last week. We're making the most of relaxation of measures while we can. We know that when everything is back to normal (if it ever is!), traffic will be too heavy for us to go to Dun Laoghaire for our morning walks. Even at the weekends, we're avoiding all the scenic spots, as they are overcrowded and parked up. Although, I think that when shops reopen, it will become more balanced again.

So Brendan brought his camera (@beebeepix1) and I brought a little sketchbook. I stood and captured people going by and seagulls doing what seagulls do, then I sat down for 5 minutes and did a quick view of Sandycove. It felt good to be looking at the world like a sketcher again. Seagulls are hard to draw!

People in a busy crowd

My final homework for People Alive, the workshop with Suhita Shirodkar. I had a ball putting this scene together. Now I can't wait to be out in crowd again and do this from life!! It will be a little while yet - I just need to be patient.

Process photos to give you a better idea of how I worked. Learned so much during this workshop. Suhita is re-running it again, starting this weekend. If you're interested, there might still be places available on Eventbrite.

The canal

The theme from Dublin Sketchers was the canals of Dublin. A few sketchers actually went out into the world and worked on location. I'm not quite ready for that. I think that, once I'm vaccinated, I will revert to the warrior sketcher that I was. But not until then. Gone too long to take a chance at this point! So I worked from photos I took the last time I sketched near Portobello. What I'm learning from working from home is that I don't have to draw things exactly as they are in front of me. I can move houses, remove trees, change the colour of the sky, I can do two or more sketches to tell my story. Hopefully I will remember all of these lessons when I'm out in the big wide world again!

World Laughter Day

 Thank you to Birgit for inspiring me on World Laughter Day!

More practise of sketching people (from photos)

More practise drawing people - portraits and action scenes. All done from Suhita Shirodkar's photos from her course. I knew my profiles were not quite right, but I didn't know why, until Suhita's feedback about the shape of the head in profile. So now I know what to do if a profile doesn't feel quite right!! 

The other drawings are exploration from the photos we had to use for the final assignment, drawing a crowd in a busy place.

Life Drawing - Izabella

 Izabella was the model at life drawing last week. Beautiful poses and perfect lighting.

I now take the opportunity to focus on hands mostly when the same pose is repeated after the break. I really want to improve my drawing of hands and feet!

Seaweed and stone wall variations

With my mind preoccupied, I'm not in the right frame of mind to tackle a big painting. So sketching little elements of nature picked up during our walks is a good way to keep myself engaged in art pursuits without the pressure or challenge of doing an actual painting. The pages below are inspired by a small piece of wood and a clump of seaweed that I found at Killiney Beach. Seaweed will always be associated in my mind with Timber, who used to love grabbing seaweed on our walks. He would either eat it or drop it in exchange for a treat. I think it mostly depended on what kind of treats I had in my treat bag. Our walks on the beach were always punctuated by "Drop" or "Leave it", the meaning of which he understood perfectly, but sometimes chose to ignore!

As I was doodling with various tools, I decided to try Daniel Smith's Hematite Genuine. Now I'm in love with this pigment and I had to try it out for the walls that will appear in my next painting, whenever I have the chance to get started with it!