Graphite Drawings and some Pen Exercises

I think I have too many projects in the works at one time. LOL, the 3 main drawings for this update are from a challenge that I have taken up from the WetCanvas Drawing forum. Draw something every day from life with pencil for 30 days. So far I am managing, mostly by doing relatively simple drawings.

Why you may wonder am I doing this, well for my 6 x 6 inch ink and colored pencil works I decided I wanted to do a squirrel, I have a great reference photo and I have drawn squirrels before, some better than others so I thought this would be relatively easy, wrong, I have struggled with this drawing, which is finally I think good enough to ink. But my struggles just made me aware that I haven't been drawing enough, drawing from observation is a skill that needs to be maintained and to maintain it I have to draw so... a daily challenge is a good thing.

For day one, three whole green beans. I like having fresh green beans with my dinner so it wasn't hard to select 3 to save to draw. In my smaller sketch book with a couple of pencils, 2H and 2B, I believe.

These are seed pods that I brought home from a visit to Boston. The tree grows on the Northeastern University campus and isn't a native tree, but right now I can't recall what species it is. Again in my sketchbook with 2H, and I think the B or HB leads.

Another dried seed pod, this one from a Milk Weed plant that I picked last fall and brought home, my sketchbook again, with 2H and I think the HB and B pencils.

I don't spend very long on any of these drawings, somewhere between 15 minutes and a half hour, I think. How long I spend isn't relevant, the point is to make a drawing as accurately as I can from observation, not just shape but shading and shadows to make the drawing come alive.

And now for something completely different. These are  3 exercises that I drew in pen as part of my reading and study of Bert Dodson's book Keys to Drawing with Imagination. This very simple starting exercise called for drawing a line that meandered around ending with a closed shape and then filling the resulting shape with various fills. I have done so much of this type of work that I only drew 3 samples. I am currently working on exercise #2 and finding that one a bit trickier to do so will do the full number, 6 to 12. Starting in the upper left, a, to the right is b and the bottom is c. As you can see they got more complex as I relaxed into the project.

The purpose of this study is to see if I can pull myself a bit more away from realistic drawing so stay tuned, Right now that is something that I am not very comfortable doing so I am not sure how long this experiment will last.

I realized after I posted the colored pencil version of this Iris to the blog that I never posted the just the inked version, so here it is. Pretty simplistic after the ducklings, but just as I like the colored pencil version I also like this plain inked version.

We had rain showers on St. Patrick's day, and the rain showers brought a rainbow. The sun was starting to set so the photo looks pinker than I recall it seeming (you just don't know what a camera will pick up color wise) I didn't go looking for the gold at the end of the rainbow, but it was fun to see. The maple tree in the photo is starting to bud. Wish it luck as we are supposed to get some snow in the next couple of days.

That is it for today, hopefully for my next update I will have the inked squirrel to show off, in the meantime comments are welcome.

Nature Journal and 2 portraits

Another blog update and another catch up page from my Nature Journal. Another visit to Daniel Webster again from April of 2013, this visit was on the 30th so almost one year ago. My usual tree stump in the panne with only 3 turtles that day. A violet I saw blooming in the grass and more Canada Geese. I decided to do the unusual and add a bit of color to the violet, this one was actually the pale violet depicted and not the dark violet which is more common.

The geese couple had 5 hatchlings in their brood in my photograph but I selected only four of them for my drawing. As I recall there were several pairs with young on the day I visited. Since Daniel Webster has quite a few predators (fox, hawks, snapping turtles for sure, there may be others) adults have to be vigilant and most parents end up raising only a couple of their goslings to full adulthood. These little ones make a tasty morsel.

In the past couple of days I have been involved with a discussion in the WetCanvas Drawing forum regarding drawing portraits. Some members suggest using tools to achieve total accuracy in a drawn portrait from a reference photograph. The tools suggested are using grids, or even using projectors of one sort or another so that an outline can be traced on the drawing paper then shading would be added.

Neither are my cup of tea. My training and inclination is to draw freehand, starting with some givens and working from there. Using erasers to make corrections as needed. If in the end I don't achieve total accuracy so be it, as long as I get it mostly right I am satisfied.

Anyway this discussion reminded me that it has been a while since I did a serious portrait study. The gentleman in the Library in the last post was just a quick sketch, so I pulled out a photograph that is actually from April's pen and ink challenge got my pencils and erasers at the ready and drew.

The above is what I finally ended up with, probably not totally accurate, but it is pretty close. I have to admit that for this drawing I did what I usually never do, I drew the boy's eyelashes. Normally I never draw eyelashes, but because he was either looking down or had his eyes closed the lashes made a very definite pattern against his cheeks and needed to be included.

Not sure how well I did with this young man. For this drawing I deliberately chose a rather difficult reference image from my own photographs. The photograph was made with a flash which reduces shadows and flattens features, also he is a young boy and was looking up at me when I made the shot. He wasn't entirely happy to be photographed as I hope his expression shows.

So the difficult aspects of this image with regards to drawing, first he is still a child and I usually draw adults (different relationships between some features) odd angle of view, and few shadows. Mostly I am pleased with how this turned out, could be better but could have been a heck of a lot worse. I wanted to challenge myself and believe me I did.

He is a relative of friends of mine, and the photograph was made at a Holiday gathering I attended.

I usually only post one photograph at the end of each update, but had to post this photograph of a rainbow. We had a rain storm come through Wed until Thursday afternoon, by evening it had cleared enough that we actually saw some sunlight, then a group of storm clouds came through bringing a brief shower and this rainbow. Photograph was made looking east with trees and houses being lit by an almost setting sun.

I did manage to get out between showers yesterday for a walk and spotted these blooming tulips. Aren't they beautiful, pretty pink and white flowers. Maybe there is another drawing here. 

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