Drawings, Life and other

The image I am starting with today is a drawing I actually made a few weeks ago, it is of a fish tank that I had when I was a child. I have been writing down stories about events from when I was a young, and one of the stories is about the family cat and how he would get into everything, literally. He used to go fishing in my fish tank, jumping from the floor to the top of tank and perching there on 3 paws so he could fish. He was so funny when he did this because he hated getting wet, so after every swipe into the water after a fish he would shake the wet paw to dry it off. I don't believe he ever caught a fish, but he loved to try. Needless to say I still need to add the cat on the top of the fish tank in the above image. I will be using tracing paper for the cat drawing and then combining the 2 either by scanning or by taking a photograph. Making a composite illustration for the booklet I intend to put together of these stories. But before I do that I can see I need to make some corrections, the left side of the tank needs some work as the perspective is a bit off.

What else I have been working on is a Quilt I started for the FFFC group before Christmas. I am making progress and hope to have it done before Friday when the new challenge comes out. When I finish it I will post it here.

Last night being Monday I went out the weekly life drawing session. Last night we had that rare treat of a male model. Believe it or not, it is much easier to get women to model in the nude then it is to get men to do so. According to some of the other artists at the session, men will talk a lot about it, but when asked to "drop trow" and do it they back off. A pity as it is really fun to draw men. There are differences other than the obvious ones that make it a challenge. Our model last night was very good, and was really able to hold the pose for us. First is my pencil drawing that I started out the session with:

I had issues with hands and feet last night, still not sure that they are correct. About the middle of the 2nd posing session, I decided that it was time to switch from graphite pencil to colored pencil. The lighting being used last night created strong shadows which I wanted to capture, so I decided to use a darker paper instead of the light color I used last week. The darker paper allowed me to use light colored pencils to highlight the lit areas. Some of the lights were colored, which is why I added various colors to the skin tones. This week I think I prefer the colored pencil drawing out of the two. The model was leaning into the wall behind him and I hope the drawings give you that feeling.

That is it for this post. I need to get back to my quilting. Until next time, remember comments are welcome if you should be so inclined.