Annuals are encouraged to seed in the less formal beds in our large garden.
We tend them, photograph them, and I draw and paint them. This is a colored pencil (Prismacolor) drawing of one of our seedling poppies. It was an odd form. Not exactly a single, nor a double and lacked the common cross markings in the throat.
(2B pencil on 120mm x 105mm paper) A Skav Art piece depicting a hellish reality where out of control technology degrades and torments humanity, such as in this Techfernum Sorcerer.
Classic story: vampire guy and werewolf guy start a basketball team; a dog joins; a clown comes after him. It's your archetypal Air Bud Situation. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a million times.
(2B pencil on 178mm x 114mm paper) An image of a line of shadowy figures, all chained together, going hopelessly and reluctantly in the same direction. Above them is a wisp of some scent or sound that was never meant for them.
I like the notion of Poison Ivy from Batman being a sort of vengeful Mother Earth. I sometimes wish Mother Earth would give us the smackdown. We deserve it.
I collaged "Krampus is Coming For You" together with my own monoprints as well as one of my drawings of Japanese Noh masks that I cut out of an old sketchbook. For the second piece, I had a drawing of Marie Antoinette as an ice cream cone, so I gave her a dress, put a background of my monoprints on her, etc. Then I added more cherries, and the circle reminded me of a clock, so I inked in the arms accordingly.
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.
Progression 4 of 6. Here the drawing starts to come together. I built on the layers I put down in the earlier portions of the drawing. Spent some time on the beard and mouth.
Detail of Hiroshige's Akasaka Kiribatake, from 100 Famous Views of Edo, 4th month of 1856.
I loved the foggy outlines of the leaves, the extreme foreground, the colors. And his skies! His skies are magical.
The exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum closes in 2 days on August 5. It is wonderful.
#museumsketching #hiroshige #sketch
uperstition : Hand Washing.
It is said to bode ill if two people wash their hands together in the same basin of water - for this will lead to a quarrel between them during the same day unless they quickly spit in the basin.
From "A DICTIONARY OF OMENS AND SUPERSTITIONS" by Philippa Waring https://www.instagram.com/p/CDCLsCOBTDX/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
The observational sketch was done in ink. One of my few urban sketches. The grandeur of the entire cathedral was too large for me to capture in my drawing but here's a little of what I did.
