Saturday, May 31, 2014

Lemon and avocado

This time I looked for inspiration in the fridge. I used colored pencils in the mini Canson sketchbook. It has smooth paper for dry media. I keep it usually in the purse and sketch faces on the metro.


Friday, May 30, 2014

Selfies

I lacked inspiration today, it is grey outside, cold and rainy. And because I keep myself company all the time, I decided to play with selfies. On the left page - contour selfies with right hand and left hand. On the right, graphite on pre-painted background.



Thursday, May 29, 2014

Spring flowers

To be in tone with the season, and because I did not play with paint in a while, I decided to make myself a paper garden. I used acrylic paint, acrylic ink, collage and watercolors and varied the way I applied them on the mat board.

For the first one, I used alcohol drops to create round shapes for the flowers: 


Here, I gessoed over the first attempt and applied fluid acrylics, some collage on the vase and white ink splatters.

For the third one, I used acrylic ink and a straw to mix the colors and create interesting areas for the leaves and flowers.

 Here I used watercolor washes. The colors appear a bit washed out in the scanned version. I applied workable fixative after the watercolor dried to be able to add more color on top without the watercolor lifting. The board was primed with soft gel. I might darken the colors on this one a bit. Oh, I also used salt and that lightened the colors a lot.


Thursday, May 22, 2014

Running horse

In the analytical sketching class, we spent some time drawing animals and I was pleased that the results showed improvement. Here is a horse I sketched on a pre-painted background. I recycled this page I did not like. First I attempted to draw a portrait with ballpoint pen - because I saw so much gorgeous sketches made with pen that I decided to try, too. Disaster! But being stubborn. I did not want to rip the page off.
I covered the mishaps with paint and moved on. I do like the horse!


Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Banana peel

I meant to draw the banana, but I was hungry so all I had left was the peel...


Monday, May 19, 2014

Sweet tooth

Since the beginning of the year, I cut the sugar intake quite a bit. Occasionally, I still indulge ...

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Papaya

Sketching my breakfast is not a great idea because I almost always have the same thing - oatmeal and coffee. How many times can I draw the same bowl?? So I drew the fruit before it went into the porridge - this time it was papaya. The background was already painted with watercolor crayons and I thought the color of the background went well with the colors of the fruit.




Saturday, May 17, 2014

New sandals

Got myself a new pair of sandals and sketched them before they hit the dust.


I got a flyer from the recycling bin. The ink it was printed with was poor quality so I transferred it to the background. I then pained some quin magenta ans stenciled through textured paper to add some action to the background.

Friday, May 16, 2014

My kitchen

Sort of ... in no way does this resemble the sketch Tommy Kane did of his kitchen. I doubt I will ever sketch my kitchen to that level of detail for various reasons. Lack of time. Lack of patience. Impossible to sit for 6 hours in the kitchen ...

This is my mini version - perspective practice.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Pointe-Claire

Next to St-Joachin church there is grey building, a convent I believe. Or a retirement home for nuns. Not to sure and I was across the water from this building, so I could not check. I had only the Lamy pen with EF nib.

Added some color at home. It is funny how much I like fountain pens as writing implements, but when I sketch, the results are never as presentable as what I see on the web ... oh well. I decided to not care about this anymore. but I still do. A little...

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Bunnies

This page was prepared with two pieces of collage from an old book. I found in the recycling bin a flier with two cute bunnies on it. They were so cute I had to draw them.

I will probably revisit the page in the future, it does not feel complete.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

A case of mistaken identity

Another page altered before hand, this time with collage - a stripe cut from newspaper glued at the bottom of the page. I wanted to draw an animal, preferably one that does not move, but I don't have any. The only stuffed animal around here is on my key chain. So I drew it again.
The way the dog leans forward, almost falling off the table top inspired the little blurb on the page about the dog dreaming she is a sexy bombshell with long, wavy hair only to wake to the sad reality that the weight of the keys is wearing her down and she is about to fall off the table. TBC .... maybe one day I will write a short story. Wouldn't that be fun?!

Monday, May 12, 2014

Analytical drawing

After the first weeks trying my hand at patterns, lines, ovals, cubes in perspective and organic shapes, it was time for the first "real" subject: plants! Results ranged from strange to sort of ok.

 The trees fall in the strange category - this one had tons of super small leaves and I could not figure a better way to simplify them and suggest volume at the same time.
 Contour drawing and pen texture:
 Pentel pocket brush



 The paper is Strathmore tan - great paper, very smooth. The marker bleeds, but it does not bother me for now.


Seeds and pods


Collage and pen

It started with a grid - 3 x 3. I cut three squares from a hand dyed paper and glued them randomly. I ate a pepper and decided to sketch the seeds; then found more images of seeds and pods on the net. I dried and glued a flower from my tea and voila ...

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Big mistakes

I bought these huge erasers to carve stamps out of them. I regret not buying more because I have not seen them anymore. This is pen, colored pencil sketch on a prepainted background. The two preexisting squares were perfect for a small sample of the carved patterns on the stamps.



Thursday, May 8, 2014

Cats


A page full of layered gesture drawings of cats - first layer Lamy pen EF, second layer Pentel pocket brush.
I like the brush line and the extraterrestrial look of most of the poses.


Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Old Birks

My old pair of Birks - almost ready for retirement.

Collage of hand painted papers, stained tissue paper and pattern paper with watercolors and water-soluble oil pastels. I like the pattern in the background, so I decided not to stain it - initially, plan plan was to wash over it with titan buff or white so that the shoes pop more. It's fun this way.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Grand Central

Last Sunday was the monthly meeting of the urban sketchers - Griffintown. It turned out to be  a grey, cold and windy day, at least until about 2pm. I wandered with a fellow sketchers to the Georges Vanier cultural centre, trying to find a nice spot indoors to draw the view. It was not much of the view, so we went out to draw the building. My first attempt was to sketch the whole building - failed. Everything was in the wrong place, nothing fitted properly on the page etc. I took a picture and I want to try again using the divider for the measurements.

I then decided to attack only a part of the building - the dome. I sketched it in pencil, then added color at home.
We sought refuge at Java U on Notre-Dame and decided to stay there for a while - it was warm and cozy. I sketched the building across the street - but it did not fit on one page so I cut it in two!



 And I also sketched some people in the mirror.