Journal drawings, Shoes and Thumbnails

I actually had the above penciled in for a few days prior to adding ink. I used the .03 Copic Multiliner for this one. Lots and lots of fine lines, almost as good as stipple without the dots or the huge amount of time that stipple takes even on small drawings like this one. Done in my new Strathmore Multimedia Journal (5 x 8 inches) from a personal reference photograph.

A real still life was the reference for this, a bowl full of 3 lemons and 2 limes. I used Paynes Grey acrylic ink and a dip pen for all of the line work and added watercolor for the fruit and bowl. I was mostly trying to see how well the multimedia paper in the new Journal will take watercolor. Not bad, not as good as using the real thing, but not as tricky as using the thinner sketchbook paper. I tried to avoid outlining anything, though there are a few in the areas where there are dark shadows. Semi happy with the results. I really do need to do more watercolor work though.

I have a habit of photographing what I call "Found Objects". They are usually physical objects found out of place, often on a sidewalk, but as in the case of the sneakers some on grass. Over the years I have made a collection of shoe photographs as you can see in the above scan. All of these shoes were dropped, lost or left by their owners who were not around when I made the photos.

Last week I printed out all my shoe images on one sheet and started a group of of thumbnails to come up with a good layout. A funny thing, when I was taking classes a few years ago I got so sick of drawing shoes that I think I swore I would never draw another, oops, well they do make interesting subjects, and these probably have interesting stories to tell about how they got left.

Above are the six thumbnail drawings I did using my "found" shoes. I know thumbnails can be a pia to do and for many seem like a waste of time. But note the first drawing I did above, The four shoes are centered on sheet, not only centered design wise but all shoes are about the same relative size. Not a very inspired drawing. I don't know about you but such is my initial tendency when starting a drawing, my comfort zone so to speak. In the next drawings I tried different things working the shoes larger and smaller, pulling them toward the edges  I probably should have done more drawings, but some of these I actually did some erasing and redrawing on just to change things up.

One of the first things that happens if you spend any time in Collage level art classes (other than beginning drawing) is that you will find that instructors push you to create thumbnail drawings to play with various layouts. Since I have realized that my initial layout drawings are usually pretty trite I have to admit that I am trying to stop plunging into a major drawing without at least some thought if not spending the time to do the thumbnails. Once I start with colored pencil I am going to put significant time into this piece, so the overall design should be as good as I can make it up front.

I decided that the one I liked best was the middle drawing on the right side, but rotated so that the sneaker was on the bottom.

Above is my working drawing, still just pencil right now and I am trying to decide if I like it or not. I intend to ink outlines on this and then color it using colored pencil. The drawing is being done on Strathmore's new Colored Pencil paper and I am curious as to how well it will take colored pencil.

The sneaker ended up a bit smaller than the one in my thumbnail, and I am trying to decide if this smaller version works. Drawing is approx. 8 x 8 inches in size.

 Only one photograph today, as fall slips into winter there is less and less plant material and insects to photograph. Since we haven't yet had a hard freeze I do still see an occasional butterfly (a yellow sulfur or cabbage white) but I haven't actually photographed one for a while. Above is a milk weed pod letting loose its seeds. Love how the light lights up the seed heads. Photographed over the weekend in my local park.

That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome.

A Doodle and More Inktober

So far so good this month, I have actually managed one Inktober drawing a day. Well sometimes the inking overlaps onto the morning of the next day, but I am getting the drawings done on the day. I am continuing to use a combination of reference materials and my imagination for these. The plant materials are the ones I am using references for and my figure is from my memory and imagination.

With the mushrooms above I have started using a brush to either add color or tone to the drawings instead of doing them all with the pen and having just lines. The mushrooms just called out for color and I couldn't resist. The brown in the above drawing is mostly ink, thought there is a bit of brown watercolor mixed in, the red is just watercolor.

Again these are done in my 8 x 5 inch sketchbook and I am doing under-drawings with pencil prior to inking. The mushrooms were collected on a visit to Massasoit State Park in East Taunton, and no I didn't eat any of them, when I finished drawing them I tossed them in the trash.

On another walk this week this one in Borderland State Park, Easton, MA. I acquired the leaf and seed pod of a yellow poplar. The seed pod pretty much fell apart on the way home so I ended up printing out a photograph I had made earlier in the day and using that as reference. I used Antelope Brown ink for this drawing.

On a walk to the library I collected this Rose Hip and a rose leaf. Also got pricked by thorns. Not sure what variety of rose the bush is other than one of the reds, it tends to bloom all summer and doesn't have an obvious fragrance.

I used Winsor Newton Nut Brown ink for this drawing, well other than the black.

I noticed this tree which is growing sort of on waste ground last year, but couldn't get either one of the seed pods or a leaf to make an ID of it. This year there was more of a low growing branch and I was able to snag both some seeds and a leaf, and yes that is one leaf and is actually a couple of feet long. The tree is the Tree of Heaven, it is originally from China and was planted for a while by city fathers who wanted trees that didn't mind pollution. It has turned into a problem invasive and is no longer allowed in some states and is certainly no longer being planted by those in the know.

I have only noticed this one tree in my city, but that doesn't mean there aren't others, which there probably are as this one is probably a volunteer, meaning not planted by anyone deliberately. Not sure how old it is as I don't know its growth habits, but it is old enough to bloom and have seeds so not young.

The ink here was Sepia again.

Above is the doodle, done with one of my technical pens, I just needed to play with something other than the more restrictive Inktober drawings. This was just drawn directly in ink, not even much pre-planning. I actually rather like it.

Both photographs are from my walk in Borderland State Park on Monday. It was a beautiful sunny warm (temp in the low 70's) fall day. This is some kind of Maple overlooking what should be a pond but with our lack of rainfall this summer was mostly an empty hole. I could see tree stumps and even some old stone fences from when this was farm land prior to the creation of a dam that is not in this photograph.

I love photograph milk weed seed pods that are releasing their seeds, the silk lit by the sun is so much fun.

That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome.