Just turn the page and leave me alone!

This is a quick pencil sketch of an idea that came to me a while back. I used a reference photo of my cat sitting on my lap.  The foreshortening of the leg is really exaggerated to create the illusion of her reaching out to turn the page. I think I needed to do a little more shadowing but overall I think I accomplished portraying my idea.

Portrait of a Dog

Portraits have never been my forte so I keep practicing, this time with a dog. I worked from a photo of this Labrador German shepard, which is my daughter's boyfriend's dog. I don't know the dog personally, so I wish I had a better picture, or at least a couple of different reference photos to better determine his coloring. Being a mostly black dog makes it challenging. The highlights in the photo come off as white and every shade in between, similar to my experience with my drawing of Darth Vader. This time, though, I was working with watercolor and fur.  I think I did a good representation of the dog that is in my reference photo, but I'm not sure if the reference photo accurately represented who the dog is.

Blackout poetry

This blog is called  "A Creative Journey", and so every once I while, to keep my creativity fresh, I throw in something completely different: poetry!  It has been a while since I posted an activity from my Artist's Way group. This activity was so simple but very thought provoking at the same time. I always try to stretch myself creatively, and this group always challenges me with something new, and this was no exception. I am not one to actually write poetry but this was a fun way to create it without having to write.
My first piece was out of an Agatha Christie book. There was a lot of dialogue so I tried to find a page without too many gaps but other than that, it was a random page. Then I went through and circled the words that stood out to me. Sharpie was my tool of choice for the blacking out.

The Secret of Romance

My next selection was a page out of Ernest Holmes, a new thought writer who focuses on one's spirituality...quite the opposite kind of text compared to Agatha Christie! I decided to take this one a step further with both color (still Sharpie though) as well as creating a face within the text.

Spiritual Awareness

Fantasy watercolor landscape

 I usually base my landscapes on a photo I've taken, but this landscape was fabricated from my imagination. Well, maybe not completely from my imagination because I did use about 4 different reference pictures and combined them into this fantasy landscape.

Figuring out where the light souce comes from is one of the most challenging parts of creating an imaginary landscape. It seems kind of like a night scene with the stars and "moon", but the rest of it seems like daytime. Maybe I should go darker with the sky and redo the stars to make them stand out more. I will let it sit for a while and come bake to it...what do you think?

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.