Sunday, November 24, 2013

Comments about drawing well with a couple of pencil drawings


I am trying to get back into the habit of drawing something if not every day than at least every other day or so. Above is another of one of my colored pencil experiments where I draw (loosely) with the colored pencils and then add ink details in over the color.

For this one I was thinking about Hollyhocks in a garden so added a bird bath. I sort of wanted to add a garden shed, but in the end decided that I didn't want to complicate the drawing that way. When I was inking in leaves, flowers and grass I decided the bird bath needed a bird. Not a very good one, but... hey this is just me exploring ideas to see where it takes me.


As part of my effort to do more drawing I hauled out the sketchbook where I was doing the Everyday Matters challenge drawings. One of the things I did when I first dedicated the book to the EDM Challenges was to list in the front all of different topics and subjects that had been proposed. There are over 300 listings.
I admit I cherry pick what I want to draw, but I figure at this point it is my choice to do so as we are no longer getting new challenge subjects. Anyway the first one I tackled was to draw a pair of my socks, see above.


Next day I chose the Draw a book Challenge. I made the book too small, ah well once I had started I didn't want to start over.

In case you are wondering the book is Ceremony in Death one of the early In Death series by J. D. Robb (Nora Roberts) This is the large print edition, I read what I can find at the library and they only have many of the early books as Large Print editions.

I am not spending a lot of time on these drawings, 30 to 45 minutes. The point is to get me to focus on an object and draw it as I see it so I am further training my hand/eye coordination.

As an aside I met a woman at this weeks Short Pose Drawing session. She is probably about my age (not young) and has a goal of learning to draw well. I mentioned that if she really wanted to do that she needed to draw every day. She told me that she does, but from what she further mentioned I gather she is drawing the same subject every day (her dog). I really wanted to suggest to her that she change her subjects if not every day then several times a week and draw something new, a cup, a piece of fruit etc.

I know that when I draw the same thing all the time I stop really looking at it, and start drawing the image in my mind instead. Drawing the mind image isn't bad, but it doesn't train my observational skills and that is really what I am after. I have a feeling that is what she is after also, well if she comes back to another session I may be able to make that suggestion to her.


The above photograph was made back in October after the first of our cold nights. The ferns have lost their color but are still standing. I love seeing their ghostly shapes in the woods. This stage doesn't last very long, I am sure that if I were to go back to this location today I would find only a few stems standing, and perhaps not even that. The photograph was made in the woods at Forge Pond in Hanover, MA.

That is it for today. Per usual comments are welcome, even if I can't always reply.

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