INKTOBER - Draw it out!

'Ring - yup yup yup - phone'...ah Sesame Street, what would I be without you.

Mindless - Day 2 prompt

It is always a good idea to keep your drawing skills up.  September the life drawing classes start again. October is Inktober 2019  where you follow a prompt (if you like) and draw every day in October.  The first 2 days have been easy - might get more challenging as it goes along!

Sketchbook

One of the most important parts of a good painting is always your initial sketch.  When I took my first art class I took a watercolour introduction.  Like many first timers, I wanted to get straight to the colour and found drawing 'boring'.  The more classes I took, the more I realized I needed to learn how to draw better.  Now I really enjoy drawing and sketching and am thinking of joining the Edmonton Sketchers group, part of Urban Sketchers, to get out of the lonely studio now and then and too improve my skills.

Today, here is a peek into my past week's practise.  The first two sketches I tried as much as possible not to lift my pen from the paper and get one line - I wasn't that successful with the faces.  These were both done from photos, one from an art book on Lucien Freud.  The other from a photo I took.

 This very quick sketch below was done on my iPad with my fabulous iPen in Notes.  Done from life of my dog lying nearby.  She did not like me staring so intensely at her and when I started the second one, the one of her head on the top, she got up and left, so that's where the drawing stopped.  Good practise for sketching in public I guess.

Onward...

I am reading a really great book on Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaccson   Da Vinci was amazing with the scope of his projects and skills.  However he did have a difficult time 'finishing' his projects.  Reading this made me feel a bit better about my sometimes painting habit of working on something then not quite calling it finished and leaving it 'for awhile'.  NOT that I am anywhere near the skill level of 'Leo' but I could totally relate to how he would often not finish a number of his projects.  He was often "stymied because his conceptions were "so subtle and so marvellous" that they were impossible to execute faultlessly. "It seemed to him that the hand was not able to attain to perfection of art in carrying out the things which he imagined" p 81

I am sure many artists out there can relate to this, in that what we envision the painting to look like just never seems to turn out the way we want.  My current struggle is with creating light in my paintings - so I am back to studying more on value and colour to try to help with this.  Below are this weeks homework for Figure Drawing class and my recent stab at 'finishing' the sleigh ride painting.

Charcoal sketch of Old Master drawing for homework

Calling it on this oil on panel

On a spree...

I am in the process of completing my very last University art class in order to obtain my Fine Arts Certificate.  It is Figure Drawing - we mostly draw from the live (nude) model and have a couple of drawing assignments each week to hand in.  Below is a bit of homework I tackled today, a copy of a an old master drawing.  I also dabbed at a small 8x10 and a larger oil painting I am tackling.  Both were not dry enough from my last painting session so I kind of started making a mess and had to give up.  I seem to have a ton of ideas lately and am on a painting spree of sorts.  Hope this lasts!!

my sketch of old master drawing - p 149 Charles Bargue