Model sketching, pencil

I have not sketched from a model in quite some time, so when the Rancho Cordova city hall offered an evening of drawing, I took them up on it. Victoria Smith has been doing an amazing job heading up this great organization, RCAFE: Rancho Cordova art for everyone. For this event, there were two clothed models that I alternated drawing with 15 and 30 minute poses. The sketches are far from being a finished product, but I am quite pleased with them considering the amount of time I had and how long it has been since I have worked from live models. I think my proportions came pretty close. The skull was just a prop for the models to use and I sketched it while the models were taking a break.

Shannara Chronicles watercolor

One of my favorite shows this season has been the Shannara Chronicles on MTV. It had it's season finale last week so I thought I would do a painting. The reference photo I used was from a screen shot from the second-to-last episode, where Eretria says "my blood is the key".

I have not done a watercolor portrait in a while so this was challenging. Now I have to wait at least 6 months for the next season...ugh!

Darth Vader, White on Black

After finishing my Darth Vader portrait in pencil, it got me thinking...since Darth Vader is so black, why not start with black paper and just draw in the white?  I didn't have any black paper laying around but I did have some butcher paper, and as long as I was working on butcher paper, I might as well just use crayons! And we are not talking fancy conte crayons or anything close. I grabbed a jumbo crayola. Go big or go home, right? So the size of this piece is about  27" x 36", pretty big for my standards. I used the same reference photo as I did for the pencil drawing. This actually took much less time than the pencil drawing even though it is much bigger.

Darth Vader pencil drawing

So I guess I've got a Star Wars theme going here: Kylo Ren, a stormtrooper, and Boba Fett. So it wouldn't be complete without a portrait of Darth Vader! It is very interesting to see how a character that is completely black turns out to actually be all different values reflecting more light than would be expected.
So is this a sketch or a drawing? Although this is not on high quality drawing paper, it did start out as a sketch in my sketchbook. But as I added in more finishing touches, I think it developed more into a drawing. Is there a time limit on a sketch? I once read that sketches are less than an hour, and since his took a couple hours (it's hard to tell exactly since this was three different short sittings), I am going to call it a drawing.
It seems like today's trend is to be ultra-realistic, but that is definitely not my style. I love being able to see the strokes of the artist, or pencil lines in this case. I'm sure I could go in with a blending stump and remove all of the lines (if my sketchbook paper could handle it) but I think leaving it the way it is gives it character and movement within the portrait.

Whirling dervish with coffee

I have been meaning to paint a whirling dervish for a while (my wife is a big Rumi fan) so I thought I would start with a simple study in Coffee...yeah right, anything but simple. It all started when my coffee maker decided not to work, and I figured I could make coffee on the stove. Well I quickly managed to burn a pot of coffee. I have tried painting with coffee before (Leopard with Coffee) and realized that normal coffee won't do, it has to be a very thick consistancy, and well, I was almost there with my burnt coffee...definitely not drinkable at this point.

Once I had my "paint" made then it was just a matter of finding the right values to capture shadows and highlights. Other than my pencil lines in my sketch outline, this is completely painted with coffee.

Boba fett, photo progression

I guess I've got a Star Wars theme going here. Here is some retro Star Wars for you: Boba Fett. I started this portrait as a quick pencil sketch (not shown) with the intention of tracing it onto watercolor paper so that I could do this in watercolor. But then I just kept adding on to the original sketch which was on copy paper.  First I added in all the shading with just pencil...

Then I started to add in some color with colored pencil...not something I work with very often so I wasn't too happy with it at this point, so let's keep working it...

Smoothed out some of the colored pencil lines and added in a background but the shading originally done with pencil has lost its some of its effect...

What do you think?  I still like the one in just pencil but it is interesting how far a simple sketch can go!

Stormtrooper mixed media

In keeping with my New Year's resolution of taking risks with my art, I have taken my Stormtrooper and transformed it into Finn...or is it FN-2187? (is that a spoiler?) Using some watercolor paint, I put in a black background as well as blood on the helmet (yes, I applied it mostly with my fingers... what fun!) Since I was still working in my sketchbook, I had to be careful to not use much water because the paper does not take moisture well.

Stormtrooper: Star Wars pencil sketch

I got some new pencils for Christmas and decided to take them for a spin. I am always sketching with a #2 pencil and that is what I am used to. The new pencils range from 2H (hardest) through 8B (softest).  It was almost like learning to draw again. I was able to get some deep blacks with the soft pencils but I thought I struggled with smearing before with a #2. These smear a lot. I tried to use it to my advantage. The soft pencils don't erase as well either. The erasure just smears it also. I guess they will just take some getting use to. I can already see that the pencils have created a much broader spectrum of values than my last Star Wars sketch of Kylo Ren.

Duck face pencil sketch

Of all the trends in 2015, I thought this one was quite silly. So let's commemorate duck face with a drawing!

The biggest challenge I had was with the hair, definitly an area I could work on. I kind of cheated on my last portrait, I've got a secret, by enlarging the face to the point where there was very little hair to deal with.  The eyes were my favorite.  Finding reference images for this was fun and quite hilarious!

Kylo Ren, Star Wars pencil portrait

Star Wars is all the rage right now, so I thought I would try my skills at Kylo Ren, the new Star Wars villain. I won't put any spoilers in here, but just by looking at him, you can tell he will be villainous. He basically is all black, so I threw in some highlights to break up the solid blacks that would have been his mask. I used some of the movie posters that are out there for reference photos...it is interesting how the mask is slightly different in the posters.

I've got a secret...pencil sketch

This is a potrait piece of actress Katie Findlay. To give proper credit, it was taken from a freeze frame of the movie "The Bridge". I titled my drawing "I've got a secret" because of the smile and averted eyes. It has been a while since I have done a portrait, but I felt inspired. I used only a #2 pencil, my go-to medium when sketching...and a nice big pink erasure. :)

Walk along the beach

At first glance, you might think I'm back to painting more scenes from Maui, but actually, this is based on a photo I took at Santa Cruz back in June. It was rainy today so I decided to look through my "art idea" file and see what project I should work on and this one struck me as a challenge! The photo was taken of a couple walking along the beach, but I thought it looked a lot like my wife and I (although I never wear my baseball caps backwards!). It is extremely rare that I put people into my landscapes, so this was a challenge for me, but at least their backs were toward me, so that made it a little easier. I had snapped the photo after they walked past me on the beach one morning. I wish the painting captured a little more movement in their walk but overall I think I portrayed the scene well.

Plain air painting at Lakeside Beach

Trying to escape the heat, my family headed up to South Lake Tahoe. The scenery up there never disappoints. One of our favorite beaches is Lakeside Beach. Although the beach can get pretty crowded, if you get there before noon, it's not to bad. I scoped out a spot back among the trees to avoid getting any more sunburned than I had the day before and started to paint. Already the sunbathers were out and I had to determine how many of them would make it into my painting.
I narrowed it down to three although my original sketch had 5. Painting subjects while they are moving around is quite a challenge, and although these sunbathers didn't move around too much, it was enough. I'm not sure I'm happy with the composition of the painting. I need to crop out some of the sand. The focus of the painting is also unclear: the lake and mountains, the sailboat, the sunbathers, the clouds?

Self Portrait Time!

What artist can resist doing a self portrait at some point? I have done self portraits in pencil: one back in college which is lost somewhere in my mom's garage, and then another that I did a few years ago when I started up doing art again. (My first self portrait blog) At that time, I had also made an attempt at a watercolor portrait, which showed that I definitly needed more practice with watercolor portraits.
I decided to put out a challenge to the Group Watercolor Painting  community to do a self portrait, including myself. Shortly after that, while procrastinating by cleaning out my garage, I found yet another pencil self portrait that I don't even remember doing, folded and stuck into a book. The words "who are you?" on the bottom makes me think this was after college and before I had a job or knew what I was going to do with my life.
So here is my first watercolor self portrait that I am actually proud of doing. It was from a selfie took of myself as opposed to working with a mirror as I had done with my pencil drawings. My jaw looks huge because of the angle of the photo I took. I took the picture with a side light source to get some shadowing. ..and that was before I found my other self portrait. I do look much happier now!

Great Scott road biking watercolor

How is it that my posts sometimes just disappear? Anyways, here it is again...

I got an invitation to the Great Scott Road Bike and Walk event in celebration of May being Bike Month. The event closed down Scott Road as well as several other roads so that bikes could enjoy the  beautiful scenic oak-covered grassland that these roads go through without worrying about cars. I was invited to come out and plein air paint along the route. I got a late start though and didn't get out until it was too hot to sit for a couple of hours painting, so I did the next best thing and took pics with my phone so I could paint back at my studio. Once I got home, I combined a couple of my photos to make the composition for my painting, then traced it onto my paper and started to paint. I was not sure if I should include the barb wire, but I think it works. The spokes of the wheels, on the other hand, I decided to leave in pencil.

Lady in pool, watercolor

 I've always been fascinated by the way light and water react with each other. A reflection in the water is one thing, but when it is just the surface of the water bouncing the light around...that's a challenge I  had never attempted...before now. Thanks to fellow artist, Kelly Murphy, for the photo reference.
The first pic is after my first couple of washes, trying to save my whites ( I really need to invest in some masking fluid), and trying to get a gradation to represent the steps in the pool, while using the right side as an experimental area.  The next step is to add in the color of the lady, the shadow around the hat, and a few more tweaks with the water. I thought I might stop here, but then I decided to lift some of the color to create some highlights in the water. The larger areas I used a Mr. Clean sponge, but in order to lift the finer lines, I used a stiff wet brush. And lastly, to crop off the right side.
I'm ready to go for a swim. Anyone got a pool?

Woman with flower basket, pencil sketch

Ok, after last week's portrait practice, I decided I better practice some more. Here is a sketch I did during a watercolor workshop by Steve Walters. Even though he was up on stage and I was sitting in the audience, it was still easier to sketch from a photo than from a model. Here is my interpretation of the portrait he was working on in pencil. My next challenge will be to interpret this in watercolor.

Steve Walters' photo, sketch, and beginning of his watercolor demo.

Portrait practice, sketch and watercolor

It has been more than 6 months since I have painting from a live model so I'm a little out of practice. I headed over to Patris' Studio since it was the second Saturday of the month which is when they usually have a clothed model doing a long sitting. When I got there, they told me they have not done the model on second Saturday since the beginning of the year, but they just happened to have a model doing a long sitting for another artist that was there that day. Just my luck that I showed on the right day of tje right month.
I decided to start with a quick pencil sketch, just to get some practice with proportions. I think I was off a little bit. The other artist that was there used the word "unresolved". The sketch is still unresolved!

I decided to move on to watercolor. With an overhead spotlight, her eyes fell into dark shadow, which gave her an odd look, but overall I think it turned out well. Her eye on the right though is still... unresolved!

gristmill plein air reworked

Sometimes after letting a painting sit for a while, I will go back and see if I can improve on it.  Usually it doesn't take a month before I do this, but in the case of my Gristmill Plein Air painting, it has been longer than that.
It did not seem quite finished but I could not quite figure out what it needed.  I decided to post it onto a facebook paged where fellow artists critique your work.  Wow, talk about putting myself out there! There was lots of input as to how to improve it.  One of the comments was that the waterline cut the picture right in half, it looked like two different paintings put together, and there was no point of focus.
So I decided to just go for it, and try to apply some of the ideas that had been thrown out there.  I raised the waterline and broke it up with some grasses. I lightened the foreground a bit and darkened the background to try to create more depth in the painting. And I added a point of interest, the fisherman. I rarely put people in my plein aire paintings so this was a big challenge. He looks a little stiff but I think it works.

 

Before

After

In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., pencil sketch

I always slip into my comfort zone when I am feeling artistically blocked...and that would be pencil sketching. It's very forgiving.
Since I had the day off in honor of Martin Luther King, I decided to go online and find one of his many stock photos. Not having a printer readily accessible, I  traced a few simple lines right off the computer screen to get started.

 I know that there are all of these amazing ultra-realistic drawings out there, but some how it just doesn't do it for me...I want to see some brush strokes, pencil marks...some remnant of the artist. It also allows me to leave the "perfectionism" out of my work.