More books

One I'm done reading, and one I have yet to read: These are a sci fi/fantasy/Steampunk novel, Incarceron, and its sequel, Sapphique, by young adult novelist Catherine Fisher. I read the first last weekend, and plan to read the second this weekend, so I painted them both together. If you want to read a synopsis/review, it will be up on the teen blog on Friday morning. Both of these covers have metallic elements, which were pretty impossible to capture with watercolor (especially because it was the lettering, key, and keyhole), but I tried to convey the essence of the covers. Still enjoying drawing with pen...

Quick Draw

There's something about an open book...if you aren't reading it, you can be drawing it. I made myself do the chapter heading lettering just as I was seeing it, which was upside down. Fun! And not too much detail. In fact, I kind of regretted going as far as I did trying to put in the text block on the page. Hard to get it random enough, and at the same time to look like regular rows of type.

Drawing and Painting

I'm continuing on with the drawing in pen each day. Last night I decided to draw this orchid plant (a gift from my friend Anarda) with my micron pen, and then today I went back and painted it. The colors are so intense/extreme on orchids that it's almost hard to capture them and keep them real-looking. In fact, I think my painting looks a bit pallid next to the real thing! This was fun to draw and to paint.

I'm not so sure about the drawing in pen / painting with watercolor thing, though. When you do your drawing in pencil, you can really define your lines, colors, and shadows with the paint alone; I found on this painting that, for instance, the center of the leaves dipped in and demanded a little different color there, but the space for that was already mostly taken up by the black line, so I had to simplify or omit some of the subtleties. Also, the black outline gives me more the feeling of an illustration or even a cartoon than it does a painting. Or maybe it's just a style thing that I will learn as I go along. Anyway--ORCHID.

Experimentation

I went to the art store today, because I lost my black micron pen and wanted to buy a new one. I didn't, of course, escape with such a meager purchase! I defy anyone to buy one pen and walk out.

One of the things we did in Brenda Swenson's workshop was draw with Tombow pens, which are colored, water-soluble markers. She uses only one color, a kind of sepia-tone, which is nice; but I decided I wanted to play with using other colors as the basis of a painting. Since the colors from Tombows will bleed into your painting if you add watercolor, though, I decided to stick with some fairly neutral colors, so I bought a gray-green, and a dull purple one.

I went out in my back yard to draw the fence between my house and my neighbors'--they planted a vine on their side, and it has crept around and up over the fence, to give a nice leafy, softening effect. So I drew the block wall and leaves in the gray-green, and then the fence cap and the blossoms on a rosebush and a scented geranium in the purple, and then I decided to paint; but instead of introducing more color, I just used a wet brush over the Tombows.

As you can see, I had very messy results; I guess I went in with too much water, and everything bled together and got blurry. Also, the purple bled into the green, which I should have anticipated but didn't. I'm going to try this again, but using just the green, and then use paints to finish, and see how it works. I like the gray-green as a base color--an interesting change from the sepia.

After this experiment, one of the outdoor cats came along and decided to lie down in the middle of the picture and bathe himself, so I did a few quick studies of him licking various unmentionable parts in some of the extreme positions that only cats can encompass. I liked these better before I introduced water, but...experiment noted, I'll try something different next time.

Book cover

Here's the cover of a young adult novel I just read. I drew this all in pen, without resorting to sketching it out in pencil, which is a first for me. The lettering was a little irregular, but otherwise, I think I caught the cover design pretty well.

I liked this book--if you'd like to read my review of it, go to the young adult blog for Burbank Public Library!

A couple more...

Continuing with contour line...

It's weird how it looks right to you on paper and then when you scan it you see every little dip and bend and sway, every strange angle and line.... Doesn't this lamp look like she has her hands on her hips and is saying "Wha-a-a-t?"

On this one, because these goblets are clear glass, I went in and tried for the shadows and reflections, along with attempting to capture the way the circular indentations that go all the way around the bowl of the goblet look when you see them through the glass to the other side. This is a weighty glass, and I feel like I rendered the heaviness of it.


So far, all of these are done while sitting in my living room. I'm going to go outside and try something more ambitious soon...

Contour drawing for 75 days?

My pursuit of the "artistic license" began yesterday. For now, I am being faithful about doing only contour-line drawings in pen. This may change as the 75-day period progresses, but I am going to pursue this kind of drawing to sharpen my eye, hone my sense of perspective, and learn to really look at what I'm drawing instead of reproducing what I THINK is there. It may get boring to look at, so I'm not going to post every blessed drawing, but I thought I'd start with a few.

Here is my footstool with my book and glasses. Yes, the book IS beginning to levitate off the footstool--it is a magic book. I specialize in drawing those.

Here is the top of my bookcase, with an array of framed photographs. Making your way around all of this with contour line is tricky and messy. I think I used about four lines for this.

And here are my most available and faithful models, Beatrice and Miniver, the one usually somnolent and therefore offering a perfect opportunity for drawing (although the poses remain quite similar), the other stately and languid, but prone to jumping up to howl and nip her sister at a moment's notice (she has thyroid issues that make her crazy).

I'm hoping to find time to paint something this weekend.