Eric

This was a project I did as a surprise for one of my buddies while he was off at basic training this summer for the National Guard. I hadn't finished a detailed graphite drawing in over a year and I wanted to see if I still had what it took.



Yep.

11x14", Stonehenge paper, graphite. I have no idea how long I worked on this, other than it was longer than strictly necessary. There is some sheen present in the photo.


Here he is replicating the pose in my cap.
(You can see one of my old self-portraits in the mirror!)

Squirrel Demonstration

Did this one a while back, figured it would be good to post it here.

I stuck my camera on a microphone stand and recorded myself painting a squirrel in watercolor and condensed it down from about 3 or 4 hours to 11 minutes, which is still a good bit. About half a dozen colors were used: Payne's grey, sepia, Vandyke brown, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, and cobalt blue. Probably a few others.

This is 8x10" on Arches HP watercolor board.


Watch the video on YouTube

Nature journal

Ah, it's been almost a year since I updated this poor blog. Let's make this one a good one! I've done a lot of things in the past few months, mostly watercolor paintings since I can do those a bit quicker than drawings.

A while back, I found a cool watercolor sketchbook at Hobby Lobby for around $8... quite a deal, considering it claims to be handmade in India, 100% cotton, and archival. I can dig that.

Naturally, it sat around the house months until I actually picked it up and decided to do something with it.

I figured that the landscape orientation would work well for nature subjects, so I've been painting local birds that I see around the house. Usually I can snap a few shots of them with my camera while they're at the bird feeder but some of the common ones I could probably paint from memory.
All of these are probably a bit more work than simple sketches... more like small paintings, depending on how much time I spend on them.

This fellow is a tufted titmouse. It's painted with Payne's grey, burnt sienna, cobalt blue, and cadmium yellow, as well as black ink.

This is a nice female cardinal at the feeder. She's not quite as vibrant red as the male, but has a wider range of colors overall. I don't remember what colors I used for her, exactly, but a good bit of mixing was involved.

This is a proud, male cardinal! He was perched on top of the feeder and I've snapped many photos of him and his lady over the past few weeks. He's painted with cadmium red, burnt sienna, viridian, cobalt blue, and some black ink.

This is a juvenile brown-headed cowbird. This was the first one I did. I drew in the outline of the bird with an inkpen and painted over it... this one has more of an illustrative look to it.