Illustrations

by

Farm Life – Sketch 1

I am playing around with ideas for a more distanced portrait. Sometimes it is nice to get the person in their daily element. This is Stephen – a farmer and a craftsman by trade. This was a composition, colors, and values practice sketch. Expect a few more to be posted before I decide which one to go with for the larger version.

by

Grandma’s Kitchen

In January I love to pull out my tan paper and practice on the toned surface with white ink. However, I tend to be recovering from a 3 month push on Inktober and then holiday painting and crash instead.

This year I did do an image of Grandma’s kitchen. She had steps leading down into it and I remember sitting on those steps with this very view many times as a child. I never thought about it, but she had an old stove, and then the new one in the corner. But with the huge extended family, both stoves were put into service during the holidays. I think of how small that kitchen was. Her whole house, really. And she raised 10 kids and a lot of grandkids there!

I also did a tribute to Cassidy, a little mini-hini that ran with the mustangs at Skydog Sanctuary. He passed and it was a great loss to even those of us who never met him in person. This made me want to spend more time drawing horses and donkeys!

by

Tanuary 2022

Pencil work

Work was extra challenging in January, but I caught a few moments on the weekends to do several drawings on tan paper.

A quick charcoal piece of my brother and I riding on Dad’s back.
Quick ink sketch for the prompt “bike” – yeah, it really does not look like my brother and I, but we were the humans.
“Self” – Yep – need to work on my inking of faces!! I got out of practice.
Finished glass “door knob”
by

Tanuary 2021

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. from the Finding Your Roots (PBS) show

I like to work on a tan sketchbook in January – although I was too busy with nieces and our weekly zoom coaching sessions to do the full Tanuary challenge on social media. We had a lot of fun, even so.

I challenged the kids to use different surfaces, including cardboard pieces and talked about charcoal, pencil, crayon, pen etc. It was good drawing practice for all involved.

by

2021 Family Calendar

At the end of 2020 one of my final projects of the year was to create the 2021 family calendar. This one absolutely annihilated me. It is a tribute to the first sibling we have lost in my family.

I printed off the normal 8 for siblings and Mom, but I also printed off 5 for my brother Aaron’s children. Then every month I write each of them about the stories that are held in the photos of their Daddy and his childhood. It has been a hard year, but I will not regret that I did this.

  • Printed double-sided on 13×19 matte photo paper
  • This is year 16 of creating these and it will probably be my final. At this point, we can start reusing some of those I made before.

I continued to do some art after the first of the year because my nieces were begging me to continue teaching and coaching them, but I lost my spark for a number of months and am just beginning to get it back. So expect some fun posts as I catch up on what I have been doing.

by

Tonal Exercise

20190921_184854

This was a week of working on tones (no details) and looking at how the eyes are made, reflections, cast shadows etc.

20190921_184911

I chose one of our local squirrels to be the subject – a little hazelnut thief. I am a sucker for them every time, though. They run around trying to bury huge walnuts in our lawn. So funny!

20190921_184918a

I find that I need more practice finding the structure and geometric shapes – then examining all the shading and light source. This has been more of a cerebral exercise than I am used to.

I need to do more of this. Nothing wrong with picking up the pen or paints and having at it, but stopping to think about the details and remembering why things look the way they do is a good practice. This has been an excellent course.

NewcastleX: NHI101xDrawing Nature, Science and Culture: Natural History Illustration 101  – EDX Link

20190921_184935

 

by

Homework

20190817_133951-orig

A study in my various pencils – this is a common thing to do to get comfortable with the tools for the current project.

The Natural History Illustration course has been fun and a lot of learning is happening. Some of the homework included unfinished sketches demonstrating the learning techniques.

20190824_124546

First activity was to work with natural items, breaking them down into geometric shapes, working their curves, etc. and this shell really showed me how rusty I am.

Week 3 Garvin

We then did field sketches of birds. Some people really finished them out. I need to spend time doing more of that, but part of my problem in the field is thinking things have to be perfect. I am working to let go of that and just get it down on paper first. Also, this was sketch paper and I knew better than to try watercolors, but did it anyway. It is a learning and reminding process.

Week 4 Flower Garvin

I learned about studying flowers and how to turn them into geometric shapes (not pictured), measure, and make notations. This lesson was interesting, but I found it a bit too detailed for me. I love seeing these types of illustrations. I hate doing them.

Week 5 Raccoon 1

This was about learning how to quickly capture form and essence of mammals. Now we are getting into my “love”.

We studied skeletal structure, which I actually found quite fascinating. I used one of our raccoons who was trying to get to our bird feeder as my model and tried 3 different gesture drawings for each pose. This lesson was real helpful and I enjoyed it immensely. I may be studying skeletal structures a bit more!

The preliminary blocking activities were very helpful. I normally jump right to this type of gesture drawing above, but doing the 2 preliminary gestures made doing this one so much easier and correct. That was an interesting ah-ha for me!

BlueJay-1

This was a practice on how to block off parts of birds using circles, ovals, and geometric shapes – which is difficult for me to do. We also looked at how their skeletal structure is made.

I am going to have to practice this a lot more and, for once, I am excited about practicing!

 

by

Urban Sketching

20181112_200206

A commission for a graphite drawing of an office building as a gift for the owner turned into a watercolor, which they chose.

First I figured out which vantage point to take with this long, low building. Then I mocked up the basic lines to make sure I was good with that decision. Next, the pencil drawing. I am not a fan of my pencil work. So on to ink and watercolor, urban sketch style. I was happy and so were they.

Thanks, Moser team, for pushing me into doing some urban work in the middle of my oil and Christmas season. Fun!