A foggy morning opens up to a burnt landscape. I wanted to paint a couple of different environments in one painting but still aim to be refined. I used fall colors and smaller lines.
I dug up this rock while hiking the Negev desert in Israel last year. It’s sharp and kinda chalky and it feels like it has stories to tell when you look deep into its lines and layers.
BIC ballpoint stick pen drawing on Richeson bulk drawing paper. This started as a contour drawing and just got squiggly (not the original intent). This was clipped to my board for weeks and I would add a few squiggles from time to time when I wanted to make marks, but didn't have inspiration. It's just a bit under 15 inches (12x18 inch paper) and is probably about 25 hours of making little lines and squiggles. The reference was a Dreamstime royalty-free photo.
Experimenting today with an oil transfer drawing technique. The red and purple lines are oil drawn/transferred to hot press 140 pound watercolor paper with watercolor applied. The oil resists the watercolor.
” Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul to waste ”
I have had an idea for a long time to illustrate Sympathy for the Devil from Rolling Stones.
This start from free sketching of cloud looking lines and soon i realise they look like atom bomb cloud. Original idea was more landscape version but maybe later.
In July of 2022, Brianna Grier died falling out of a moving police car while having a mental health breakdown. Since Brianna passed, I have been heartbroken for her twins and family but also reflecting on my struggle with mental health. Mental health needs compassion and empathy, not police and punishment. The brunch strokes are purposeful, but I completed them with empathy in mind. I want to keep the composition simple but filled with meaning. The color theme represents vastness and loneliness, but also kinetic energy found in warm orange tones.
I’m often asked about my Bic pen drawings and how I do them. It starts with a good foundational drawing, the ballpoint pen part is just trying to colour within the lines. I try to do my best to explain the process, but the best way to show my progress is by posting my efforts to master pen drawings over the span of 3 or so years. I have been doodling/drawing with ballpoint pens as far back as I can remember - they were cheap, readily available and always lying around the house. It wasn’t until I was bored during a particularly long team meeting-conference call (around 2016-17) that I started to think about the possibilities of ballpoint pens as serious portrait illustration tools. My first experiments with full colour ink portrait drawings were rather crude, but that’s the point of learning new techniques—as long as the curiosity and the love of drawing is there, you can transfer that skill and passion into any medium. Remember, the most exquisite drawings and paintings you see didn’t materialise fully formed, they started out as failed experiments. Failure after failure after failure. It’s important to remember this when you get discouraged (I've failed spectacularly over the years). The only difference between the accomplished artist and the beginner is hundreds of hours of practice. Talent can only get you so far. It’s the hard work that you do behind the scenes that makes your work look effortless. Keep doodling. Keep learning. Stay curious.
Oh boy, markers (NOT a go-to), least favorite color, and a subject that isn’t on my radar. This was a hard one what with 3 negatives going for it. But, hey, it’s a challenge, right?
Choosing a subject came first….we have a house full of Indonesian masks and sculptures. (My husband studied gamelon music in Indonesia.) Garuda, the “mount” of Vishnu and popular with Balinese artists seemed a good choice, esp. since he can be green, red, yellow or orange.
I rarely choose yellow/orange for anything---artwork, décor, clothing...though I do have a soft spot for sunflowers.
First I drew a bunch of images based on one of our wooden Garuda sculptures and then made a simplified marking pen outline and colored it with markers.
Colored pencil drawing of pomegranates "in progress." Prismacolor and Verithin pencils with some fine lines done with Tombow Irojiten pencils. I like the harder colored pencils for fine detail, but the blending of high wax and oil pencils can't be beat for blending.
I have found my new love in playing with the Glass Ink Pen where I can easily achieve specific lines that are hard to make with a regular pen. Here I am working to gain confidence in my permanent line work where I can't erase every second. I am also working to gain experience in cross hatching. which is very difficult.
This line from the Stephin Merritt episode of the 'She's A Talker' podcast (referring to Stephen Sondheim plot-lines) got my imagination ticking in overdrive
My idea was to make a textile pattern for fabric printing. Drawn on paper with a micron pen .005, colored with pens then put into Photoshop for some color manipulation, blurring of lines and pattern arrangement.
Im Kurt and new to Doodle Addicts. Loneliness and anxiety dominate my life and are reoccurring themes in my art. It wasn't until recently, after countless jobs, countless attempts, and thousands of dollars in school debt, that I realized it is what it is. At this point, I am trying to learn how to express myself through art and build a community without the pain from before. Negative or positive, I hope you feel something and will like or comment. #MentalHealth #GeneralizedAnxietyDisorder #ItWillGetBetter