Sketches 3-7-12

I've gotten back into the habit of sketching since I don't have as much time to work on other drawings while I'm at college (I can't very well haul around all my supplies from 9-5 everyday!). I've been experimenting with all sorts of new media and tools, andI feel like I've really branched out a bit but at the same time, returned to my roots where I used to just sketch from imagination and draw all sorts of critters.

I have 3 sketchbooks going right now: a Pentalic Nature Sketch, Aquabee Super Deluxe, and the good 'ol Artist's Hand Book I've been working on for a couple years now. I'm using the Pentalic as a watercolor sketchbook, the Aquabee as an all purpose one, and the Hand Book for a bit of everything as well.

Mostly, I've been playing with Derwent Graphitint pencils. They're excellent sketching pencils and make a lively alternative to a plain graphite pencil thanks to the calm, subd color... it's not full-blast like watercolor pencils or colored pencils, and it handles exactly like graphite. When you apply water, it turns into something very much like watercolor. Some of the colors are not very lightfast whatsoever, but they're too pretty to not use. I actually bought a pencil in one of the colors, Juniper, specifically because it's a really beautiful purple color and I wanted to do monochrome sketches with it... its lightfastness rating is a 1, meaning it'll fade in under a year if exposed to regular light.

A flying squid. Used an ocean blue and chestnut Graphitint pencil.

Another flying squid in ocean blue Graphitint.

A cuttlefish in steel blue Graphitint with an ocean blue background.

A grackle, drawn with a watersoluble sketching pencil.

Blue jay, in those two blue Graphitints.

One of the mocking birds I've watched grow up by my house this year. This one was drawn with colors from the Graphitint 12 pencil set, used dry.  The colors seem to be very well suited to nature.

A tufted titmouse, the first thing I drew with the Graphitint set.

3 mushrooms from imagination.

A wasp and a carpenter bee, drawn in the Aquabee sketchbook, no less. Top was with a Derwent onyx pencil, bottom was with one of my old Sanford Ebony pencils. They don't make 'em like those anymore... I've heard the quality is very poor these days. I'm glad that mom got me a few boxes of them years ago.

As you may notice, some of these are on small cards. I bought a few packs of pre-cut Artist trading cards and have been using them for small sketches. Friends seem to love having these little cards as collectables or for bookmarks and whatnot.

Darkness and Light

I love this time of year. The weather's been cold but not freezing and there's a certain way the light falls when the sun comes out that results in some fantastic sky patterns. I've never really done any landscapes, much less skyscapes, so I figured I'd go all in and try something dramatic.

This is a view of the sky from my house when it was this brilliant orange and purple color last week.
Totally freehanded this one, no tools/measurements or anything... I don't know how well I could do that for a portrait but it was no problem with scenery.

The foreground scenery was drawn with a soft charcoal stick and the sky was done with a black PanPastel and one of those round sponges as well as the flat, rectangular sponge. I really like PanPastels so far.

9x12" on Strathmore 500 charcoal paper. I'm not sure whether to call this one a drawing or painting.

Another one for 2012

This one was a request from a buddy's sister. The actual color of the drawing is more like the sepia one but I put it in grayscale when I scanned it also, since it looks nice that way too.

8x10", strathmore 400 drawing paper. Same HB and 3B pencil as well as a B pencil for VARIETY.

Hey, I finally figured out how to draw blonde people! Now there's a milestone.

2012 productivity!

Super detailed realism takes too long. I wanted to finish out the family series of some of my relatives, so I adopted an old-school style of pencil drawing akin to what you'd see artists in the 40s and 50s and I'm pretty happy with it. I still gravitate more towards the detailed rather than the sketchy style, I guess it's just personal habit.

Here's a couple. They only took 2-3 hours apiece and are 8x10" on Strathmore 400 drawing paper. Done almost entirely with an HB leadholder pencil and a 3B regular pencil for the dark parts.

These two kids are siblings. There is one more in the family I need to draw, then the set will be finished.

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!)

Summer/Spring Stuff pt. 1

Haven't posted much in a while.

I moved all the writing, recipes, and music related stuff to another blog. This one is now designated purely as an art blog. This makes it easier to keep both things organized and is easier to read.

The Beta Position

So, without further ado, here is some art!

German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel. He came out rather well, I think.

The clothes and hat are done with General's Primo Euro-Blend charcoal sticks and pencils, and the skin is drawn with Wolff's carbon pencils. I use them similar to how I would a graphite pencil - gentle, slow circles to make the skin texture and tone. It's pretty easy; easier than I expected considering that I've never really used them much before.

He's the first in a multi-part series consisting of Rommel, Patton, Montgomery, Omar Bradley, and others (to be determined).

Self portraits rock. I love doing self portraits.

This is 8x8" in graphite and took between 16-22 hours... which makes me lightning fast compared to many artists! (Albeit not as reliable as far as actually FINISHING things!)

I like Tombow pencils. They're fantastic as far as pencils go, really smooth. Not as black as General's, but SMOOTH. Another example of great Japanese quality! Staedler's another good brand I wish I had more pencils of. Along with super nice knives, Germany produces some of the finest art implements I've ever had the pleasure of using.

Ah. As of this posting, I have 3 day left to do an 11x14" drawing for a wedding... better get at it!

Mark Harmon

I found three illustration board pieces that I'd cut up a while back and figured I'd make use of them.

Illustration board's not the most permanent medium (The paper on the Crescent 310 board I use is 100% cotton and acid free, but the gray-core board isn't quite so good.) but it works well for ink so that's what I use. I use a TON of water, and illustration board is the only surface that can handle it besides watercolor blocks. Clayboard would too, I suppose, but it's more expensive.

Crescent Premium watercolor board is the archival stuff: it has a white core. 

I took two scans. The first is about 1/3 of the way through, the 2nd is finished.

Mark himself is done in sepia ink. The background and shirt are black ink.

The wash method I use isn't exactly common. From what I understand, ink & wash was very popular earlier in the 1900s, but has become somewhat obscure these days. I recall reading about the technique in Rudy de Reyna's "How to Draw What You See" and thinking that it looked just dandy: thin ink with water and brush it on. How much more simple can it get?

The end result looks very much like a watercolor painting although it has very different characteristics:

• Ink thins with water but it sure doesn't lift like watercolor. Once a layer is dry, it's on for good unless you want to risk damaging the paper scrubbing.
• Ink handles a little differently. The vehicle for ink isn't gum arabic, so it behaves differently on wet paper. I can't describe it exactly, but if the paper is dry, it doesn't wander. It stays put exactly where you brush it. However, if there's a wet area nearby, you can count on that heavy ink you just laid down to go racing towards it and spread out. For fun, just wet a large area of paper and brush ink wildly throughout it. It spreads out in many interesting ways.
• It's very easy to layer ink. Since it dries waterproof, each layer goes on without disturbing anything else at all. This is an extremely useful property for tweaking gradients.
• As ink in a container dries, it thickens and becomes extremely easy to drybrush, much more so than watercolor. This is handy for adding texture to areas and doing hair, wrinkles, etc.

This is probably my favorite method of drawing. It's basically a western version of Sumi-e although I just use a cheap #6 white nylon brush, small script liner, and spotter. Drawing doesn't get much cheaper than that. I honestly believe even plain pencils would cost more in the long run.

I haven't seen it used much for portraiture but it works fine for me.

Drawings 4

I haven't updated this in a while.

Here is a carbon pencil drawing I did of my grandparents as a christmas gift for my grandma.


General's Carbon Sketch pencil is probably my favorite pencil I've tried. It's soft and easily blended with a tortillon, keeps enough of a point for details, and is really, really black. I still use charcoal pencils, but this has basically replaced them for general sketching or drawing. It also works well with pastel pencils as a black.

Drawings 3

Only one this time!
This blog is still young and more of a journal at this stage, though.

This one was done a while back, around September. It was originally intended to be a preliminary sketch for a pastel painting, but it turned out unusually well.

Graphite drawing on Strathmore 400 drawing paper.



She's probably been my favorite person to draw, ever. (Well, next to the various self portraits I do, heh.)
I've done a few of her but this is my favorite so far.

She also really loved this.
That's one of the things that makes art so worthwhile.

Drawings 2 (Demo)

More drawings!



These two were part of a demo I did:



There is the preliminary pencil drawing and the final color drawing.
Differences are visible between the two, I cannot recall which are corrections and which are just minor accidents. Generally, the color version is more technically correct.

As for the actual technique, I use conte crayons, pastel pencils, and soft pastels.
A simple conte sketching set has rapidly one of the most used tools in my arsenal. I begin with bistre for the darkest areas, blend it in with a cotton swab, and layer on the sanguine crayons and blend to shape the general form of the skin. I use three or four soft pastels to add in a little extra color to the skin afterwards.
Pastel pencils are used for the mouth, eyes, and details.

It's a very straightforward technique and I think it produces pretty good results.




This is another portrait produced using the same technique:





I don't really know either of these ladies very well but they were nice enough to allow me to use their photo for a reference and seemed very pleased with the results.





I have come to realize that I'm fairly good at what I do... it kind of surprises me just how happy a simple drawing can make someone.
The longer I do this, the more confident I become in my skills.



Hopefully I'll be doing this for a long time.

Drawings 1

There will be many of these posts... I'll keep them numbered as "Drawings 1, 2, 3, etc." so they're easy to find. As I gain more experience, you'll also see paintings and the like.

I found a paper I particularly like. It's Strathmore 400 drawing paper: not specifically archival, but good paper and I figure it'll last a long time anyway. It's so cheap, I can't really find anything else that really compares for the price. I use a better paper for more in depth works, but this one works great for general purpose drawing.



You'll either recognize this woman or you won't. This graphite drawing took about 3 hours and is one that a lot of my friends really like for some reason. I've done better ones, but they still like this one. The lady herself is very aesthetically pleasing, in my opinion.

One of the things I'm liking about blogger is that I can post higher resolution images. Art is best viewed large, preferably from life but this will work fine.







Here's one I did of a friend. He's a good guy and easy to draw because he his head is so ellipsoidal... heh.
This is an ink and brush drawing. This is actually probably my favorite technique I've ever tried. It allows me to work very fast and still maintain a high level of detail. I use a #4 white nylon brush and india ink thinned with water for this technique. My personal preference is Higgins Black Magic. It goes a long way: this is actually probably cheaper than drawing with a pencil because so little ink is needed.

Many of my methods are based on cutting costs and spending less while maintaining a consistent quality of workmanship and materials. I feel you shouldn't have to break the bank to create art.

Who I Am: Part One

Greetings again!

This is more Getting to Know You, but it may be of interest to someone, and it helps me to better understand myself as well.


I've always felt a need to draw. Ever since I was a kid, I don't think there was ever a time when I didn't do it.
I got my first taste of portraiture when I did an amateurish first attempt in about 2004. I did a couple more (Literally. I did two drawings.) and some of my friends liked it because nobody else around here could really draw. I did maybe four portraits that year... all of them pretty mediocre, yet they made people happy. I can't say I had the best work ethic. I didn't practice much and basically took a sabbatical after that year.

In 2007, one of my friends asked me to draw her, and I did.
An odd thing happened. Apparently, in the couple years I'd been slacking, I'd somehow gotten pretty good. I have no idea how this happened. Naturally, this prompted me to take another year off drawing altogether... I didn't have much time anyway, what with school and all. Not that I ever really studied in school, it just ate up 8 hours of my day and left me too tired to draw in the afternoons.

Cut to the year 2009.
I started drawing again and it started coming to me fast.
I can't explain it, but for some reason, I began really, seriously picking up the skill. It's not that I spend days practicing; in fact, I don't really "practice". I do maybe one drawing a week at most. Maybe it's just because I put a lot of effort into it. I research a lot. Perhaps my brain just is good at applying learned knowledge.



At any rate, one of the things I'll be posting a lot of here is art.
You can watch as I work, improve, and try new things... hopefully I'll learn something in the process and others will as well.