An automatic drawing, everything is out of my head with only the briefest idea of a story line. I played around with shapes and lines and shading to see what affect would result. It was fun, but time consuming.
Binge-watched “Bridgerton” last weekend and paid the price for it all day Saturday. The drawing is based on my wife's picture of me on the couch sleeping off my bad decision. HB, 2B Staedtler mechanical pencils on 8.5” x 11” acid-free sketchbook.
This drawing, with a bit of watercolour, was done years ago in North Vancouver during a figure drawing session. Probably 15 - 20 minutes. Watercolour, subtly employed, can have wonderful affects. The challenge of working fast forced me to ditch excess thinking. And it's funny, because at first I thought, "Oh, this is terrible." Then the next day, with fresh eyes, or checking out the drawing in a mirror, I think, "Wow! How did I not see how good this is?" Never throw out your artwork immediately after a drawing session. Give them a few days and look at your work with fresh eyes.
In an attempt to be much more consistent with my drawing practice (and to tackle my insecurities about showing people my drawings) I am hoping that posting some of my sketches online will help keep me accountable. So day 1 sketch, I managed to find a very cheap used college set of Rotring Rapidograph pens online, when they arrived today I was delighted to see that they had NEVER been used! After a bit of a happy dance I got a couple of the pens assembled and started to figure out how they work. This is a quick sketch on tracing paper not that I was tracing anything I just need to invest in better paper with less tooth to be able to use these pens without having ink flow issues.
This painting is a technique I enjoy mostly because I see figures in the ordinary and draw them out from what I see in abstract backgrounds I paint. In it you see a group of people enjoying time together. I used Acrylics on Aquaboard, a surface especially made for many layers of wet media.
In the style of Lucien Freud, this little painting didn't take long, but was fun and an accurate representation of the model. Plus size models are often just as interesting as many of the thinner models we got in drawing sessions. Beauty exists for different people in different ways. Character is certainly a big aspect.
One of my first landscape experiments in Photoshop. Whereas I previously was working in GIMP. I just wanted to experiment with values and distance and fog and mist, etc. The female figure adds some story to the scene.
A challenging media—Crayola wax crayons!
A self-portrait: I find that I’m grasping for something that always seems to be out of my reach. I didn’t bother to enter the official competition because I don’t have access to the specific colour set that they specified in the brief. I did enjoy drawing this self portrait with a medium I would not have considered. An awesome change of pace!
This is another way of working that I really like. Fine liners and chalk (colour) pencils were predominantly used, with a quick smothering of acrylics for her scarf and coarse posca pen marks for the jumper :). About the subject, Handmaid's Tale was one of those rare books that I read more than once growing up and it stayed with me, hence why I decided to draw Margaret Atwood (not seen the series yet though but I hear good things!). I accidentally had her hand cut out while penning the figure - still working on my scale and composition!
Malik straining to keep the twisting pose. Decided to leave this one as a slightly rough red Bic pen sketch for now. There’s something to be said about the energy found in the work-up drawing.
2023, Ballpoint pen on 5” x 8” acid free Moleskine sketchbook paper, Adobe Photoshop. First sketchbook drawing of 2024! Based on a photo of a model in a makeup company advert.
