Drawing Life: Monday Matador

Back to the sketch book today for Monday’s challenge.  The end result is a little less impressive than my recent digital art,  but I’m glad to be keeping up!

Drawing Life: Diva Tuesday

This is a lovely dramatic photo. However I stopped this before the arms got too wonky… 🙂

Drawing Life: Running Monday

Back to pencil (HB). I quite like this, but once again I am reminded that I must, *must* pay attention to proportion!!

Original challenge here: http://drawing-life.livejournal.com/8579.html

Drawing Life: Friday Fish

I love today’s flying fish challenge – such lovely shades of silver and blue. It seemed appropriate to use one of my favorite techniques – a combination of metallic pencils (and black).

A lovely combination,  though it does tend to make a mess!

Drawing Life: Smudgy Lighthouse

On a whim I used an 8B pencil for this.  I  think it gave the picture a lovely smudgy abstract feeling. Original challenge here: http://drawing-life.livejournal.com/7869.html.  I love Jessica’s pen and ink.  It reminds me of a van Gogh (without colour :-))

Drawing Life #2

Today, Women working on a bomber, 1942.  I decided to concentrate on a face. (I need practice on faces). About 15 minutes, pencil.

Original challenge here: http://drawing-life.livejournal.com/7659.html

At Aussiecon 4, The Water Nymphs

Here are final (slightly skewed)  pictures of two of the pieces I produce for the Worldcon Artshow at Aussiecon 4 (I talked about them earlier here).

The Water Nymphs are reproductions of reliefs carved by Jean Goujon for the Fontaine des Innocents in Paris. The original reliefs are now in the Louvre, but plaster casts can also be found in the Cast Court of the V&A Museum in London. The V&A Museum is an inspiring place to sketch and the Cast Courts in particular are great place to explore tone and colour. It’s amazing the difference there is between colour tonal pictures and plain graphite or charcoal.

I first sketched  A Water Nymph back in 2006, using the ‘magic’ pencil combination of blue, yellow, green and purple and was completed in a lovely afternoon at the V&A Museum in London (it involved tea and cake). I’ve always wondered if the same sort of effect could be achieved with other colour combinations – most particularly with a set of metallic pencils I have, ranging from platinum to copper. This was my chance to find out – and it turns out a combination of metallic (in this case – silver, gold, antique gold, and bronze), do work beautifully together, as long as you can also add black for effective shading (in the blue/yellow/green/purple combination, this job is carried out by the purple). Enter a black conte pencil, and the final effect is dramatic and shiny. ‘These Water Nymphs are drawn on navy Canford card and they have been framed professionally.

Aussicon Art: The Water Nymph

Things are moving along in my preparations for the Aussiecon Art Show (which is just as well – it’s only 6 weeks away!). I wanted to concentrate on pencil art for the show and this has taken me in a number of directions (some of them – ahem – not including pencils!). My first completed piece revisits a piece (and a style) that I have very fond memories of – the water nymph.   The water nymph uses the ‘magic’ pencil combination of blue, yellow, green and purple and was completed in a lovely afternoon at the V&A Museum in London (it involved tea and cake).  I’ve always wondered if the same sort of effect could be achieved with other colour combinations – most particularly with a set of metallic pencils I have, ranging from platinum to copper.  This was my chance to find out – and it turns out a combination of metallic (in this case – silver, gold, antique gold, and bronze), do work beautifully together, as long as you can also add black for effective shading (in the blue/yellow/green/purple combination,  this job is carried out by the purple).   Enter a black conte pencil, and the final effect is dramatic and shiny.

Work in Progress

I’ve reserved a space at the Aussiecon Art show and, you know, now I’ve got to fill it :-O I have a couple of ideas, one of which involves tentacles. This is a pencil sketch I’m using for reference… (originally tweeted by iPhone :-))

Hardest! Pose! Eva!!

This is the 10 minute pose from last night. It was an unusual pose for 10 minutes – normally they’d be more dynamic, with the ‘floor’ poses reserved for longer poses later on. It was also an unusual pose (at least from my position) because the bodyshape is very different from normal. In most poses there will be markers – legs and arms – to define the shape. This body is mostly a vast expanse of back, which was actually quite alien to draw. It was a good challenge, although perhaps not one I was up to on the night. I was tired and the time restraints meant I was pretty slapdash. I think it turned out ok, although the hands are either quite stylised or a bit of a mess. I’m becoming used to going through an OMG This is a disaster!! moment halfway through almost every drawing I do, but I normally manage to turn it round – sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.

The model from last night was very drawable.