Remember this bust? I got her in January 2010 and I'm just now getting around to sketching her. I've not been sketching much at all lately--there is always something else that needs my attention, like cleaning or cooking dinner. I know it is nothing but procrastination, but unfortunately, it wins sometimes. No, I'm not proud of that fact, but there it is. Anyway, today was beautiful, in the eighties, sunny. I don't enjoy Texas summers much, so I figured I needed to spend as much time outside as possible before it gets here. I mean, eighties!!... in February!? Since the backyard is in that ugly stage it gets after dealing with a week of hard freezes, I picked the Diana bust off my desk to draw and carried all my supplies outside. This is modified contour in my Lamy Safari fountain pen with watercolor added. Limited palette of cadmium orange and pthalo blue. The colors on the scan aren't quite right, the background being more of a greenish blue. 
I did this one yesterday and it is fairly obvious that I hadn't been sketching much. I did it for Julia Kay's portrait party. This is "Stacey" of staceysketches on flickr. Again, the scanner didn't quite get the colors right...the background is more of an orange color than pink. I wasn't happy with the results, but considering how rusty I was when I did it, I'll be thankful for what I managed!
This was done from a morguefile.com photo posted by earl53, ref#179348. I loved the sketch, but felt like I ruined the painting first thing by using a purple for the shading on the lighthouse. It was very sloppy, with me getting out of lines here and there. (obviously not concentrating!) So, I went over it with a micron pen. It's growing on me now. Definitely glad I didn't pitch it in the trash like I was tempted. In fact, I almost didn't even continue the painting after the purple, and only did because I viewed it as practice. My thought at the time was, well, it is already ruined so it can't hurt any. 
The top picture here started as a simple sketch on some scrap w/c paper (scrap paper seems to be the one thing that gets me painting!), done while watching a video. One thing that always get me while sketching a moving person is that one side of the face seems to always be drawn from a slightly different angle than the other. The results are sometimes like this, with one side drooping. This doesn't bother me though. It is in pencil and if I had wanted to I could have corrected it. My main interest here was playing with my new brush and the newly reorganized palette. And practicing grays and browns. (I made that brown myself! So proud... Only, I don't remember how I did it!) The background was not sketched in and just sort of...happened. Even though the whole scene seems kind of STATIC, I do like this one. It seems like Uncle Fred just posed for a snapshot or something.
This one really makes me laugh. I had fun doing it, don't get me wrong. It's just that I approached it in true 'Raena' fashion. You see, it was an exercise in the book "The Complete Watercolor Course". One of those books that I've not read, only looked at the pictures. I decided to do the first exercise, and wouldn't you know it, I only looked at the pictures. So, I missed a few things and the results aren't quite right. I might try this one again, this time reading first!
I'm really enjoying these new brushes, especially the da Vinci Maestro! What a lovely feeling it has! This top one is based on one of our family favorites, a black and white photo of my dad. I guess he was about four or so. I began with a pencil sketch, adding the watercolor; but, I didn't like it for some reason, so I added the ink. I didn't spend a lot of time fussing with the sketch and probably could have focused a little more on the hands, but I like it. It would be worth revisiting for a more serious painting sometime. 
This one is from imagination. I love the feel of the brushes so much that I picked one up and just started putting down some color. This is what came out. No pencil first and only added a few lines when it was done: a line separating the lips, two dashes for nostrils, and lines defining the eyes. May be a few anatomical errors, but it was actually fun to go in without the pencil. It felt more like I was sculpting her face, than drawing it. The results surprised me, and I may try doing this more often.
After making my last sketchbooks there was a few scraps of paper left over. The one above is 3.5"x6". My blog name and the quotes were written first; then I found an awesome photo over on morguefile and added it to the middle. (photo by keyseeker, ref. # 671269) I was watching a movie while painting this and didn't expect much, but I really like it and now it is glued into my larger sketchbook, along with the following sketch. Pencil with watercolor. (Though I used a black pen to do the pupils.)
This was also done while watching that same movie on another scrap piece of paper. It is about 3"x3". Used sepia pigma micron 01 and watercolor. I think she looks a bit like Nancy Drew. I mean, she has that expression...like there is a mystery to be solved, don't you think? Maybe the guy behind her on the right is one of the Hardy Boys.
Finally there was a day when I could sit outside and comfortably sketch without feeling the oppressive heat suffocating me. My husband was working on a lawnmower in the garage. I sat in a camping chair out front, in the shade. Of all the things I was surrounded by, this dirty old gas can is what I chose to sketch! (well, technically, I guess everything out there is dirty!) I sketched it in pencil. Then I used tracing paper to transfer it to watercolor paper. I knew of this technique, but believe or not, I had never tried it. I think one of the advantages of it is not worrying about messing up the original sketch. Definitely something to remember if you've lost your confidence or if you would just like to try painting with different techniques!
Sketches from posemaniacs. I had just about forgotten this site existed until someone posted some sketches they did. I filled nine pages (9"x12" sketchbook) with 30, 60, and 90 sec gesture drawings. Then, I went to random pose and did these sketches, untimed. I'm not sure how long they took, 5 mins or so? And for the first time, I realized I could keep the same pose and sketch it from a different angle. (The two on the left are the same pose, rotated slightly.)
This was done mostly while watching Pirates of the Caribbean. I paused the scene at the pier to draw the two men. I loved the guy's face on the left. Very unique! Started as a blind contour in ballpoint, so his face is somewhat skewed, but I like how it gives it a caricatured look. Then I drew the skeleton, bottom left, from memory. I have a photo of a skeleton head that I drew from next, to see how much I had retained in my memory sketch. More meerkats, started blind contour, shading and texture then added. This page was fun to do. See the tilted girl? Do you do that? Seems like there is always at least one drawing on my page which somehow ends up cockeyed!
You may remember this one from here. I really liked this sketch but ruined it with watercolors the first time. So, I redrew it from the prior sketch, and amazingly enough it looks MORE like him this time. I wanted a portrait similar to the one I did of myself (#6), so I could frame it and put it next to mine. (see it on the wall in the photo of my workspace?) Things didn't go as smoothly though, and even though I used the same paper, the mistakes couldn't be scrubbed out. The paper began to disintegrate. Can you see that dark spot under his chin? That would be one of the spots! I also don't like his pupils being that dark; they're distracting. This was sketched in pencil and the tone was added with neutral tint watercolor.
After seeing Dan's wonderful charcoal drawings, I decided to pull mine out and try using them. I had vine charcoal once upon a time, but I couldn't find it. I have these things, but don't confuse that with 'having used' these things before! Like my oil paints, they have been sitting in a drawer, unused. Now, when I did a quick sketch with the vine charcoal-- a couple of decades ago--I remember it being easy to smudge around. I didn't realize the pencils would be so different! If I had known it wouldn't be as easy, I think I would not have put in the tone the way I did. See all those lines in the background? I thought they would smudge out. Anyway, I struggled with this one and finally gave up. I knew something was off, but didn't realize exactly what, until I scanned it and accidentally hit mirror! Now do you see it? Maybe you saw it in the first scan and I didn't because my eyes weren't fresh, but when I mirrored it, it was so obvious!! There is a definite slant to the head that shouldn't be there. The good news is that I now know of a quick way to look at things anew. I'd like to try this again, but I think I'll pick up some vine charcoal next time I'm out, or perhaps locate the stash I have around here, somewhere! 
There is a lot of talk amongst our group about how negative we can be on our own work. We see the flaws that others don't. I think about that a lot when I write my posts, but I just can't stop pointing them out. But, I wonder if that is really a bad thing? The way I see it, if I don't acknowledge the flaws, how can I improve? There is a lot that I like about my drawings too. I may not mention them as often, but I think if I didn't find some redeeming qualities, I would have quit already. Sometimes I am embarrassed to admit that I like them, almost like it is too immodest(?). Maybe, but perhaps by my picking out things that bother me, it might help you too? I can think of several occasions when other bloggers have pointed out things they didn't like, which I hadn't noticed or even thought about before. It was new to me, and I learned from it, and I can now apply that to my own artwork. What are your thoughts?
And this is my entry in the moleskine collaboration I have going with Dan. One of our plans is to push each other out of our comfort zone. So, with this one I prepainted the background to give us something we had to work with/around (against?). I drew it in a medium bic ballpoint pen, no pencil lines first. (The exception is in the teeth, where it isn't good to outline in black!) I've used this technique with the background a few times now. It is supposed to help unify the whole page. Only, it didn't work out so well this time. Is it just me, or does her back arm almost look like it belongs to someone else? Oh well...let that be part of Dan's challenge: to make her arm look attached! Something else that I did was zoom in. I don't see him do that often. The drawing is loosely based this morguefile photo. Like I said, I went in straight with the pen, so when I went astray with the face, I just went with it.
This is Jerry Waese, a participant in Julia Kay's Portrait Party. I tried using just two colors, indigo and burnt sienna. I had never done this type of exercise before, so poor Jerry was my guinea pig. I got the reference photo from here.
This was a piece of watercolor paper with preexisting splashes of paint on it. In the midst of the swirls, I could barely make out a bird. So I found a photo which seemed like it would fit and this is the result. BettyfromTexas tells me it is an African Grey.
And this is my semi-new workspace! Before, my desk was L-shaped and I had two areas that I could pull up a chair. The problem with this arrangement was that I'm a little lazy and disorganized by nature, so the end opposite of my computer became a place to stack my junk! What to do? Grab a round saw and cut off the last two feet (didn't take the desk outside...it was too heavy!), swing it around to the front, and attach. Wha-lah!! U-shaped workspace! Okay, now, don't laugh...but, this is CLEAN! And because everything is within reach, I am managing to keep it relatively so! I love my new space!
This is Wally Torta of CrackskullBob. He recently did a caricature of me for Julia Kay's Portrait Party which I was thrilled with, so I wanted to do one of him. The pencil sketch was scanned in just in case it became necessary to finish it digitally. I was really happy with this (and actually, I do like it) but I felt it was getting away from me there at the end. I accidentally made the shadow under his chin too dark, and the shadowy side of his shirt got confused. The light circles in the background were actually orbs of light on the original photo. They aren't very noticeable until you change it to black and white. I liked them, so didn't edit them out. This is done with pencil and watercolor in Canson Mixed Media sketchbook. 
And this is NC (Norman) Mallory. He thinks I've made him look like an elf and assures me that he's really a troll. It's done on used computer paper (sorry Norman, I was watching a movie and didn't think I'd do a sketch worth keeping), with pencil and a watercolor wash for the background.
This is a not-so-good portrait of my sister. I recognize her, but something in the eyes is off...I think it's the pupils. In fact, as I look at it now, I think the eyes aren't even pointing in the same direction. There was a point earlier in the painting part that I actually liked this. But I couldn't stop; I obsessed. Oh well. I'll try this again. But maybe I'll look for a photo that shows her beautiful smile, instead of the little smirk she had in this one. Yes, that would be more flattering.
Whew! I've been doing some crazy things the last few days. Most of it has been a complete fiasco. Like the canvas that I glued tissue paper onto and then tried to do a portrait in acrylic. Only, I've very limited selection of acrylics and they didn't work the way I expected. Not only did the skin tone turn out a hideous orangy color, like someone spending too long at the tanning beds, but the tissue began to dissolve and break apart as I added layers of paint to hide the mistakes. It WAS a failure-- an utter failure. But that's one way I know I won't fail again. And it was fun to do something I've never tried before. 
Oops...lips too red. Oops...face to red. 
I went back to this and toned down the background with a glaze. Thanks Dan for the suggestion! There is some improvement, though I think it may need another glazing. I'll probably just leave this one alone though. Never was too excited about it to start with!
This ocean scene is only about 1" X 3". I did it for study purposes only and from imagination. I wanted to get better at doing clouds and this is the one, out of about five, that I liked best. I got the idea for doing it from Barbara Weeks. She did some really great studies at the beach.
These are from imagination. No rhyme or reason. Not technically correct. They just became. I thought they looked kind of cool. Anyway, I wanted to get something up on the first. So Happy February everyone! Spring is right around the corner!
