Preston was a Christmas gift I sent to a friend, who was then kind enough to have him pose for a photograph so that I could draw him.
I think Preston’s shades of blue and green fur were hard to capture with the shades of pencil crayon I had, but I do like the way the fur effect and the shading comes together to create a shocking effect! Continue reading
I’m not sure if this little cat figurine is actually any kind of quartz at all. Like Clip the Rockin’ Unicorn, I got her from my mom at Thanksgiving 2015, when she was giving away a lot of things to declutter her place.
I did this sketch just lightly with graphite pencils, and I like the way I was able to capture the unusual shapes and add some nice shadows. Continue reading
A still life from the same 2015 trip… my friend brought along a toy puzzle shape that I’d never seen before–similar to the Rubik’s cube, with moving pieces and colored surfaces, but instead of a cube it was shaped as a dodecahedron–the shape of a twelve sided die, with regular pentagons for each side!
I like the way I was able to use color in this drawing to show the shapes fitting together, and used outlines to suggest the brown table background without drawing it all in. What puzzles me most, though, is the pink shape over to the left–I remember that the grey one on the right was a nail clipper, but I’m drawing a blank on the pink. Continue reading
I resolved to do many drawings while travelling with a visiting friend… a few of the sketches from that trip are in T for Toronto. This one was the day after we left Toronto and took a boat trip to Beausoleil Island in Georgian Bay. We landed at Honeymoon point, hiked through some of the trails on the north side of the island, and then returned to grab snacks from the cooler and draw…
I’m glad I tried something new with this drawing–and there are several recognizable details!. The stupid boat kept turning around, which was very inconsiderate of whoever was sailing it! Continue reading
This was another early still life off the Everyday Matters challenge list. For “Something with buttons,” I think it didn’t take me long to settle on one of the many remote controls I have lying around. (This is for the minisystem stereo with AM/FM tuner, 5 CD changer and 2 tape decks! 😉 )
I like the way I used color and shape in this drawing, and it may be the first time I tried to “suggest” the shape of letters without drawing them in full. Continue reading
Hey! So, this isn’t the kind of animal friend that I usually draw, but I’m glad I did. I got this little wooden figurine size rocking horse/unicorn from my Mom, who wanted to declutter her place a little. I’ve named him Clip, after one of the coolest unicorns in the Apprentice Adept books.
I like the use of shading in this drawing, and how I was able to focus on the shape of the letters in my mom’s name instead of on the left-brain meaning of them as letters. Continue reading
This is the other picture that I drew at the Taos Toolbox workshop at Snow Bear Lodge in 2015–and again I didn’t take a comparison picture. I seem to remember that there were these deer figurines all over the condo units; certainly there was one in the unit that I shared, and when we first arrived it had our condo keys hanging off its antlers. So I put my keys back to draw with it.
And we actually did see some deer in Taos, though nobody in my class ever saw a living bear there.
I like the way I focused on the shapes in this drawing, especially “paired shapes” like the antlers before and behind, and the two pairs of legs, front and rear. The shape of the one key hanging in front of the deer’s body (and just about in the middle of the entire drawing) is nice too. Continue reading
This is one of the first still life challenges I tried from the Everyday Matters list. The date I marked down on the page is anachronistic; I suspect it was actually drawn on October 24th in 2015, and for some reason I was thinking of September.
This rooster was one of a whole pack of barnyard animals I got at the local dollar store as gifts for my local Nanowrimo writers. The animal figures are quite popular as prizes for reaching your writing goal at a write-in or winning a word war, and I dropped one into the goody bags for everybody who attended the Nanowrimo kick-off party in 2015.
I really like the effect of the outline in this drawing, and the color, though the mix of graphite grey with the red to indicate shading didn’t work out so well. And I like the shadow on the ground. I didn’t take a comparison photo at the time, so the lighting is different and the rooster is from a different pack, but seems quite similar. 😉 Continue reading
Another simple still life. I didn’t take a comparison picture of this particular granny smith apple, and–well, I have some golden delicious in the fridge right now, but you guys all know what an apple looks like, right? 😉
I really like the use of hatching and crosshatching for shading and shadow here, and the detail near the top of the apple where the stem comes out! Continue reading
