Redpath Museum

Sunday I joined other sketchers for the monthly meeting of the Urban Sketchers Montreal. The meeting point was Redpath Museum. I spent few hours there and sketched mostly in pencil. I decided to add color at home and to give an workout to art supplies that I do not normally use: colored pencils, watercolor pencils, and maybe watercolor crayons. This is still work in progress, but this is what I have so far:

I am pleased with how the antelope turned out. My previous attempts at drawing animals produced results that reminded me of mutant creatures in sci-fi movies. I did not get the depth of the giant clam too well, but I might try to draw it again from the picture I took. I also took pictures of the shell collection to use as inspiration. I will post the remaining sketches as soon as I am done.

Texture & gesture

I received ahead of time the info about the upcoming Dynamic drawing class I will be taking starting Saturday. Classics on the menu: gesture drawings causing me a lot of grief; texture samples great to do waiting for appointments; abstract shape design.

I used pen, watercolor brush and ink, niji brush filled with diluted black ink.

 This shape was inspired by a ginger root.

 Ballet dancers from a youtube video. I had to give up trying to draw a torso, legs and arms because the movement was too fast.

There will be more of these in the weeks to come, I am sure...

Coffee grinder

Before Christmas, I order a coffee grinder from etsy. One of those small hand grinders used for Turkish coffee. The funny thing is that we used to have at least two of the big ones at home - one at our place and and at least another one at the grandparent's place. Nobody cared much about these, they were old ...I did not count on it arriving too soon, considering the holidays and all... but no, it was here rather quickly. Impressive...

The grinder works great, but it is too small to grind coffee. I will be using it to grind spices.

Terraskin

Paper made of stone ... who would have thought. I had to try it. I had two sample papers and decided to try first pencil and pen and ink. I am planning to try watercolor, acrylic and collage. I like the smoothness of the paper, very easy to work with. It was harder to erase the pencil and also to lift wet ink. In fact, the ink dried almost instantaneously. For me, this is a bit of a drawback because I draw slow and make mistakes that need correction. I will keep playing with it and use some of the papers as covers for pamphlet booklets.

My model was a picture of Orson Wells in Falstaff. Sorry, Orson ...

Recycling bin

I did not know what to draw, so I went looking in the recycling bin and I found a plastic gallon bottle all squished.

Magazine sketches

I found myself with a stack of the free local newspapers they hand out at the metro and some time on my hands, so I started sketching from the newspaper. I used my Pilot Penmanship pen - which I came to love.

I think I captured the posture, also the proportions seem more pleasing to the eye (I have hard time with the measurements, I usually eyeball everything). The faces do not resemble at all however.

TV sketches

I want to keep my hand moving on paper as often as I can. I cannot wait for the perfect circumstances that would allow me to produce a finished piece - regardless what that is. I draw slowly and I do not have chunks of time to dedicate to drawing. Only minuscule bits here and there. It is mostly about quantity, hoping that quality will follow. One day...

Last week I did some TV sketches while watching the end of "Crimes and Misdemeanors" followed by 
"Forks over knives". Few of the sketches were done after pausing the movie, but then I decided to go with the flow and if all I could draw in few seconds were the eyes, so be it.

Some of the faces are simply funny - like the one to the bottom right on the first page. For some reason, it reminds me of an antique Greek warrior wearing his helmet. It was great fun, but I was tempted to stop all the time "just few more seconds to get the nose in" or whatever. I had to move or I would have never finished the movie.

Cup and tomatoes

Browsing the web for sketches done with pan pastels, I found this and I used the photo to do a watercolor on paper primed with absorbent ground for pastels.

Hard to get all those shadows right and the paint mixes differently because of the absorbent ground. Practice, practice, practice ...

Pantry shelf

I've been wanting to draw the mess in my pantry for a while now and I finally did it. I recycled some watercolor paper with a couple of layers of acrylic ground for pastels and decided to use pan pastels for color. I bought them a while back and hardly ever used them - one of those impulse buys that leave me perplexed today ...

I can hardly believe it took me two hours to add color to this 6 x 3 sketch...but I liked the exercise. I might do it again in the future and paint a face instead of bottles and jars.

Charcoal sketches

These are based on an exercise from One Drawing a Day.

 This is the example from the book.

 My camera.

I selected these two faces because here I followed the steps from the book more closely. The idea was to start the sketch by blocking the big shapes, then adding the features. I kept starting with the features andI had to be really careful to start with the shapes. I decided to leave some of the contour lines out.

And because I was in a playful mood, I turned the last 2 sketches into this:

My first impulse was to throw them to the garbage, but then I decided to glue them down in the sketchbook. as a mean of recording progress. Hopefully there will be progress...

Last and first

The last sketch of 2013 based on a photo from the Quick Sketch 2 course - Cathy Johnson. The exercise was about depicting architectural details.

 

The first sketch of 2014 - faces from TV and the furry residents.

 Any resemblance to characters - real or imaginary - is accidental :) The sketches were done while watching The Sting. Some of them are based on Robert Redford's character. Truth be told, I had to pause the movie to draw, it was too hard to draw while watching. I used Pilot Penmanship fountain pen delivered on the 30th.

I  must say I was pleasantly surprised with the line quality - very thin, just as I like it. 

As for resolutions, I have none. I will do my best to draw more often. I know I have to sketch a lot more before I can see a significant improvement and in the past years I failed to do so...