Today’s art challenge was to do whatever we want. I wanted to work on drawing faces from different angles. I have trouble with the low-to-high perspective. I started this picture with a rough pencil sketch, then used a fountain pen to ink the lines, and applied some gray with Tombow watercolor markers. Getting the eyes to look right is the hardest part. My usual error is to draw them too close together. The ear may look too big, but my ears are big!
It’s been a dreary day, a SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) day. I’m located on the south side of a mountain. In the winter I get about 4 hours of sunlight a day. Today was a little different: I started having dreams of moving to Southern California.
I did feel a flicker of cheer as the sunlight entered the living room for a few minutes. Then it disappeared behind the mountains and I instantly began to feel blue.
At the Al Fresco Art club meeting I decided to paint another self-portrait with my trusty Pentel brush pen and my St Petersburg White Nights water colors on Canson Mix Media paper.
39/365
I’ve take drawing classes that emphasize that a character needs an “action line” in order to be dynamic and interesting. Unfortunately, it seems that my characters usually don’t have anything like a gesture or action line. Today’s drawing reverses that trend. I intentionally drew Jimmy with what I hoped was an action line as he’s leaping to try to keep his friend from being sucked down a chimney.
Why did I put Aeolus up in the left hand corner? Because everyone know that he’s in charge of making the wind blow. Besides, I like the antique versions of Aeolus with puffy cheeks blowing those gusty winds at poor Buddy. I think he looks mean, but there has to be a villain in the story. He’s a good one.
I’m still going with grisaille for this painting.
38/365
Another grisaille. This time Jimmy and Buddy are playing poker, it seems. I’m not much of a card player, but I do know that four queens is a good hand. Too bad for Jimmy, but Buddy has four aces. I know because that’s the story I wrote in my head.
One thing wrong with this picture that I’m thinking of: I forgot to add Jimmy nose. Even at this year 3/4 view his honker would be prominent. This drawing, painting, and processing, and writing this post, took about 1 1/2 hours. I was hustling.
37/365
And now Momma Jay. She’s looking a little tired here after all the business with Jimmy Jay and the chimney. I can hardly blame her. I watched Steven Reddy’s Bluprint course called Dynamic Detail in Pen, Ink,& Watercolor. I’ve got my 1-ounce bottles, my Rotring Tikky and Uni-ball Vision pens, my Rapidograph ink, and my Canson Montval All-Media art books, and now I’m working to get the hang of ink washes.
Today I thought I’d show Momma Jay at the local beanery staring down a heavy duty cup of espresso. I wanted a foreground, middle ground, and background. Overall I’m happy that today’s drawing is a one-inch improvement over yesterday’s. Next time I’ll work to get the foreground object popping a little more.
I can see that I didn’t mix my 50% and 100% washes quite dark enough. I resorted to using Photoshop to pump up the contrast and clean up some errant drops of ink.
I’m trying to keep about 50% of the page white. My darks could be a little darker, and I’m going to work on drawing daintier hands for Momma.
36/365
More turnarounds, this time Buddy Butterfly. I did my best to rein in my tendency to lay on the wash with a heavy hand. In fact, to make it more likely that I wouldn’t ruin the drawing, I kept the wash very thin and applied it in 4 glazes, and then for the final glaze, doubled the drops of ink for the darkest areas. I’m thinking I could have done another glaze to get a little more pop.
The question now is what will happen to this sketch when I apply watercolor? Will it be bright? Or will it be dreary? We’ll find out tomorrow.
The outlines were inked with my trusty Rotring Ticky Graphic 0.7.
