Found Shoes

Oops, the found shoes project took far longer to finish than I expected, but it is now done.

Above is the inked version of the shoes just prior to my starting work with the colored pencils. I moved the child's sandal in the upper left to be a bit more in the corner and made some corrections to the laces (which still aren't quite right, but I don't care). I used my 0 sized technical pen to draw the outline. As a reminder the size is 8 x 8 inches on Strathmore's new Colored Pencil paper.

Above is the finished colored pencil drawing. I used various Derwents (Artist, Signature, Colorsoft, Studio) pencils with usually an over lay or final layer of Faber Castel Polychromos. Colors were mostly my pick though some were inspired by the actual shoe colors. I had the most fun with the high heel, which is in the original photo black. Isn't it more fun my way? I have actually seen sneakers that were almost this color of green, though the ones in my photo weren't.

I rather carefully tried to use each color in more than one place, repetition is after all one element of design. I didn't want to color the background so instead came up with this idea of something like slats. I did use a ruler to draw the lines and to get the spacing a consistent 1/4 inch. But I did not use the straight edge to actually draw the lines, so they do wobble a bit, which I think is more in keeping with the style of the rest of the drawing. The black was inked using my 1 technical pen (.5)

Actually I am rather pleased with how this came out. I like the bright colors, and like how the background works. There are some things I might have done differently, but overall I am not displeased. Oh yes, the paper, I rather liked using it for colored pencils. It has some tooth so will take 4 or more layers of pencil, but it also feels like a firmer surface than what Stonehenge paper has. Stonehenge seems to feel soft to me and tends to "absorb" color meaning you have to add more layers than you might think you need originally, with the Strathmore paper the color stays on top. Now I have to think up another project.

The above is a very sketchy drawing of a vase with flowers and was made at a friends on Thanksgiving Day. I was invited for dinner and after the feast I sat around listening to the chatter and drawing various objects. As I said very sketchy but I still rather like it.

Photographs from my local park today. I haven't been going very far afield lately for my walks. In fact most of my walking is between my home and the library. Since the days are getting shorter there is less daylight available for photographs. Ah well, Christmas isn't that far off, along with the winter solstice after which the days will start getting longer again.

Above is one of this years Signets stretching it's wings. The birder group I belong to on facebook won't let us post invasive bird photos, I totally understand, but still rather like this photo of this young swan. They are usually graceful looking birds.

Above is one of the ponds in the park. This is a section of the park that I don't usually visit or photograph, but I rather like the photo with the cat tails in front and the mostly bare trees in the distance. A very typical November day.

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

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.

Sunflowers, shoes and pears

Above is a small watercolor that I just finished. It is from a photograph of Jerusalem Artichoke flowers I made a couple of years ago at Massasoit State Park in E. Taunton, MA. The Jerusalem Artichoke (one of its many common names) is a native North American sun flower. The roots were eaten by Native Americans. The plants bloom in September with lots of tall stems and showy yellow flowers. 

Anyway I did the ink drawing of the sunflowers while I was on vacation in Chicago over Christmas but waited until I got home to work on the watercolor portion. I find it slow going to paint flowers, these took more than one session with paints and brush to reach a point where I felt they were done. The painting is small, post card size (4 x 6 inches) on heavy (120lb) watercolor paper done with my Travel sized Winsor Newton watercolor box.  

I have mixed feelings about using watercolor, I like the results when I can get the look I want, but don't really like the process. But maybe that is just my lack of skill. My technique is to use thin layers of color to build up to the final results. Not for me the one stroke of the brush and calling it done type of painting. I admire those who can paint that way, but it doesn't seem to work for me. 

These next two images are me working on my still life's. This time with shoes. The one above was done with Derwent Graphtint pencils. They seem to be a cross between watercolor and graphite pencils. I have about a dozen of these in various tones that were a Christmas present a couple of years ago. Anyway, I draw with the pencils first then apply water with a damp brush and watch what happens.

A couple of years ago if someone had told me I would be drawing shoes again I think I would have thrown something at them. When I was taking classes at the Community College it seemed like every instructor wanted us to draw shoes, so I drew shoes, and more shoes and then again more shoes until I was totally sick of shoes. Now here I am a few years later finally willing to tackle the subject/object again. They are after all complex shapes and readily available, who knew.

Same shoes but a different day and slightly different pose, this drawing was done directly with ink using one of my technical pens.

This time the subject was pears, I actually used the same pear just different positions for these drawings, the one above was done with the Graphtinit pencils and water. Because these are being done on cheap sketchbook paper you can see where the paper has wrinkled from the water, with the scan it gives an interesting visual effect.

The pears above were first drawn with pen and ink then scanned into Photoshop where I added the colors and grey shading. Colors aren't totally realistic as this was a Bosc pear, but realism wasn't really my goal I just wanted to play and see what I could come up with. There are about 4 different colors on each pear, does give them a bit more depth then I would see otherwise.

Above is another photograph from my walk the other day. I need to get out with the camera today as we now have about 6 inches of cold snow on the ground. If I get back over to this park I may take another photograph of this piece of art work. Brockton doesn't have a lot of municipal artwork but there is some scattered here and there.

That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome. Hope anyone reading this who is in the Northern hemisphere is staying warm this cold winter.

Countdown 1 Day left

Gems of the Sea

Today is the 14th of January and tomorrow was supposed to be the mailing deadline for my Sketchbook. I should make it, I have 3 more spreads and the end page to finish and I have all of them sketched in. However I received an E-mail from ArtHouse today saying that because of weather conditions and disasters in many parts of the world they are extending the mailing deadline to Tuesday the 17th. With this extension I may revisit what I had planned to do on the final spread in the book. Currently the design isn't really relevant to my theme, but hey I figured I was allowed some latitude on the last spread so even though I have more time, I don't think I will change it.

The above page is of oysters and pearls. Pearls are the only "gem" that isn't a stone, well... I had forgotten about amber and coral, but amber is fossilized resin, and I don't really consider coral a gem stone. Anyway my drawing shows 2 oysters and a few pearls, one sitting between the halves of an open oyster shell. Pearls after all are created inside an oyster, outside is the outside of the shells.

Footwear

Shoes, when I went back to school many of my art classes had me drawing shoes. I have to admit that I got a bit tired of them but when I was searching for themes for my pages it occurred to me that I could show a drawing of an indoor slipper and an outside shoe. Which is what I have done in the above spread. The black shoe looks fairly solid in the scan but in the sketchbook it shows more value variation.  They were actually kind of fun to do after not doing one for a year or so.

Scrapbook

For this page I actually glued in another piece of paper. The idea of a scrapbook is that you assemble in one place various items, usually papers like photos, ticket stubs etc. The rest of the image is of a glue bottle opened to show the brush inside the cap. I think this spread works with my theme on several levels. I like the concept better then my execution, the bottle and cap are both a bit wonky.

Drawing Tools

 The above spread is a drawing of one of my mechanical pencils, with an extra lead and a pink pearl eraser next to it. This is a bit of a stretch, but the lead does go inside the pencil. I love my mechanical pencils, so easy to sharpen the leads when you don't have to worry about getting rid of wood. The leads do come in different hardness's, I prefer using a 2B lead for my graphite drawings but have been using a 2H for the sketchbook pages. The 2H is easier to erase and doesn't leave any remaining marks on the paper.

Tree Rings

The idea for this spread was to show a tree trunk, and then the cross section of the tree with the tree rings. I didn't realize just how weird a section of a tree trunk would look on the page, hence the scribbles at the top with the lines to indicate cut offs. This is another scan that looks darker then the original page. Not sure I succeeded with the bark on the tree trunk, but I tried.

Outlook on Blue Hill

This drawing was done from a Photograph I made last spring inside the Lookout Tower built on the top of Great Blue Hill outside of Boston, MA. The tower was built in the 1930's by the Conservation Corp and from the top you get a great view of Boston and the surrounding communities. This view is from the ground level looking out one of the open doorways to the woods and ground around the tower.

Frog Pond

Frog Pond is based on some reference photos I downloaded. This is of a frog sitting in some water in its pond.  I added some lily pads just because. Don't ask me what kind of frog it is, I really have no clue, but I love drawing frogs so this one was fun. The frog is outside but in its pond.

Bottled Cloves

This drawing I did with just pen and ink, it is of a bottle of whole cloves placed on its side with a couple of cloves spilling out of the bottle. For years (while my mother was still alive) it was a practice of mine to make cloved oranges for Christmas presents. It was always one the gifts I gave to her. They smell wonderful for an extended period of time and are fairly simple to make. When I started doing this they were also relatively inexpensive to make, though when the price of cloves began to skyrocket the gift became a bit more expensive. I didn't do anything fancy, just stuck the orange full of cloves, I placed the cloves as close together as I could get them, and then let it dry for a week or so before giving it to her. To save my fingers I started poking holes in the orange rind with a knitting needle prior to pushing in the clove. Before I started doing that my figures used to get very sore by the time I had the orange about half way done. I also used to pick the smallest orange I could find, usually a navel, as they have a thicker rind and are what is available around Christmas.

Dog House

 Above is a dog in its dog house, which of course is outside. Not much to add to this, it is what it is.

Caged Bird

Last image for today is of a parakeet in an old fashioned bird cage. I did a fair amount of research for reference parakeet images looking for a bird color I liked. When I was young my sister had a sky blue parakeet called Sky. He could actually talk, and when allowed out of his cage loved to sit on my mothers head and lean down to preen her eyebrows. One day he flew out the front door and was gone. My sister was devastated, as it was pretty much a death sentence for him. We left the cage out in the yard for several days with the door open, but he never came back.  My cage has it's wires too far apart to actually hold a bird in, but it is my drawing and I didn't want to over clutter it with wires.

This is a long post. I was going to do it yesterday, but ended up sleeping most of the day with a low grade fever and a cough. The cold is better today so I am catching up. Here in Eastern MA we had about a foot of snow on Wednesday. Thankfully I didn't loose power where I am, but the city to the south of me had major power issues caused by downed trees. Hopefully all of my readers are safe, warm and dry. Per usual comments are welcome.

Shoe Revealed

It's done. I finally finished the shoe yesterday afternoon and presented it this morning in class for critique. The instructor seemed to like it, and it is one of the ones that he kept for display. Though that isn't really a huge honor, I think he kept most of the ones that were finished today to put on display in the classroom. I am not totally pleased with it. I got the back section a bit too long so didn't have enough space for the front slope area between the toe and the rise for the shoelaces. Ah well, by the time I realized the problem there was no way I was going to take the existing construction apart. So I will just have to live with it. Here are a couple more views of the finished shoe.

Side View

rear side view.

What he liked about it, it has mass, it is very solidly constructed, I used lots of glue. There is a variation in color and in the direction of the planes (cardboard pieces) He felt that it is a bit architectural. I think because if you look between the layers you can see the pieces I used as separators. Many of the other students just used cardboard layers, stacking them up one on top (or against) the other. It works very well for some of the designs, but I didn't want to cut that much cardboard so used separators.  But I think I spent 12 to 14 hours building this shoe, so even with the separators it wasn't a quick project. A couple of students did heeled strappy type sandals very successfully. The guys tended toward sneakers, or boots. My shoe boot is a bit of a combination, heeled but still a boot/shoe.  We are now moving onto a new project, this one will use sheet metal (Aluminum) and we are supposed to be designing our own Protozoa. The set up for this project is that a new protozoa has been found and we have been commissioned by a museum to create a wall sculpture that depicts it. I should have sketches to show next week.

In Illustration I finished my first scratchboard project. This is a landscape done from a photograph provided by our instructor.

Structure in NE field.

I probably should have scanned the photo I used so you could compare it to the finished image, but I didn't and it is too late now as I have turned it back to the instructor. Not much to say about this, it is what it is. Though I will say that this is not a technique that I think I will fall in love with. It takes a long time to do, I think I spent about 4 hours on this one.

For graphic design, my packaging project is due on Thursday, and for my Dreamweaver class we have to create a flow chart for our web site. That's it for now, I may add a post with images of my packaging Thursday or Friday. Wish me luck getting that done for Thursday class. As always comments are welcomed.

Still life and shoes

It has been a quiet week... oops wrong blog, and actually I have been very busy, just not a lot of finished work to show for it. Things are mainly in-progress, I am working on our 2nd Graphic Design project (package design), the 3D large shoe (but I  have pictures) and I am still working on the mandalla. My one finished piece is below:

This is my final project with pen and ink work for Illustration. We had to do a still life based on a setup the instructor assembled for us in class. He had quite a collection of objects, a couple of skulls, stuffed birds, plastic flowers, a wooden owl, you get the picture.  We had to draw 4 or 5 objects that were part of the still life and render them in pen and ink. We used 2 classes to get the drawing in a final form plus some work at home. Then we transferred the drawing to Bristol Board and did the inking. I used a fine crow quill pen, and a fine technical pen. The technical pen was used for stippling the skull and the flowers and the rest of the inking was done with the crow quilt. I downloaded some pictures of live quails to use as a reference for feathering on the stuffed quail. Probably a good thing as his stuffed quail have seen better days and are quite faded and dull. Live quail have a lovely subtle coloration. I have to say that out of all the illustration projects we have had so far this is the one I enjoyed the most. Next would be the shell illustration. Guess that means I prefer to draw natural objects.

We are now moving on to a different medium for illustration, scratch board believe it or not. But this isn't the scratch board you used in grade school, crayon on paper with india ink painted over it, no this is clay board which has been covered in ink. Believe me when I say that the work can be amazing when done by someone who knows what they are doing. I don't expect amazing results on my part, but hopefully the work will look OK. Our first assignment on the clay board is to do a landscape. Our instructor brought in photo's he has taken and we had to pick one to use for our drawing. Mine has a structure (sort of a storage shed/barn) with trees. This has to be done for next Monday's class so wish me luck.

We are still working on our shoe design, this time the large version, in my case the shoe will be 20 inches long. Here are some in-progress photo's for you to enjoy. It is actually a bit further along but I will save that for next week when I should have finished pictures for you, as it is due at the beginning of next Tuesday's class.

Here is the sole with the finished heel section.

Shoe with the beginning of the front section built, note the real shoe and the small model in the background.

This is where I was with it before Tuesday's class. I have now started on the back section of the shoe and tonight finished (I hope) cutting out the cardboard pieces I need to do the back to middle of the shoe. This is the part that has the opening for the foot. 

That is it for this week. As I noted there is a fair amount of work in progress. Next week we are supposed to turn in our product packaging for Graphic Design so I will have photo's there, along with the finished shoe and my first efforts at scratch board. As an aside, I was terrible at scratch board as a kid, so I am not expecting great things.

As always comments are welcome.

Mid November 11th week school

I am trying very hard this week to get my brain around the fact that it is November and Christmas is only one month away. I need to get some plans made for the Holidays, and am having problems getting myself in gear. Hopefully everyone else is doing better then I am.

This week I didn't have my drawing class so I don't have a lot of images to show. However that said I did take my at home time to finish up my Shoe project for the Color and Design class, the image directly below is the original drawing of 20 shoes. They were supposed to be sketches but I did a bit more detail then that because I didn't want to find the shoe to redraw it onto the cold press board. In the end I had to dig out some of the shoes as I didn't have as much detail as I needed. Still it was easier to draw them the second time around so it wasn't to bad to do them that way.

Sorry the image isn't great, but it is pencil on paper which is tricky to photograph, and I had to use the flash on the camera because we have a rainy overcast day here in MA and without the flash the image is blurry.

Here is the finished project, which I rather like, pen and ink with some gray on a Cold Press Board. Lots of details in this so it took way to many hours to get done. Still it is a piece I feel I can show off if I need to so I think it was worth the effort.

In computer graphics we are finishing up our software learning with In-Design Adobe's publishing software which is taking over in a lot of shops from Quark Express. I have an exercise that I need to complete and then we will be move on to our final project. Wish me luck. As always comments are welcome.