Sketching Crows

We've had an abundance of crows in the park this year and I enjoy watching them interact. All the posturing that goes on and some seem to be holding conversations with each other. Intimate conversations. Backs hunched, heads close together...I can almost imagine them whispering secrets

only crows can share. They are such smart birds. I wonder if they gossip. One would think so watching them. I've spent time sketching these crows while I sat on my sofa and watched them out my front windows. I thought I'd share a few. They might find their way into a painting or two. Who knows.

                                                                               

Another Shell Sketch

I've got a rather large conch shell I've used as my model this time. I'm not quite as happy with this as I am with the first shell sketch. I think my pastel paper may have been too dark. I'm posting it anyway. I had plans of doing a series and calling it 'Shell-f Life'. I may still follow through. Have to see where inspiration takes me.

Back to the Drawing Board

I found myself stuck on a problem with my cat collage *sigh* so I decided to go back to my roots...drawing. I haven't sketched much of anything in quite some time. Being able to draw and sketch should be a basic skill of every artist. I realized I had grown lazy, using my computer screen as a light box to trace simple outlines for my paintings from photo references. I was always so eager to get started on the painting I was neglecting my prep work.


I have this shell that has sat on the tank lid of my toilet as decoration for years. It's a crazy looking thing. Well armored with spikes poking out at every angle. This must have been one bada** snail when it was alive and I'm sure it died of natural causes.

I sketched this shell from four different angles with ballpoint pen. I used a pen to keep myself honest. No erasing. Then I found a few sheets of sanded pastel paper. I hunted through my art supplies and found my sketch set...one sepia pencil, one sanguine, one china white and also I grabbed a medium charcoal pencil and went to work. I'm posting my current results for Operation Snail Shell.

Plotting a Painting of Peacock Orchids

I put the original photo into Irfanview, greyscaled it, then selected 'emboss'. Much to my delight(!) the nepeta in the foreground (which I plan to include and was dreading painting) looked just like textured acrylic gesso so the gesso will definitely play a part in this piece.

Art Nouveau? Needs a fancy graphic border.

I have a wonderful stone aggregate birdbath that didn't make it into the original photo. Ummm.....

I have not been updating my blog much lately but I have been working. Mostly I've been printing and packaging notecards for the Artists Market. Labor Day weekend is basically our last hoorah for tourist season, then art sales tend to drop off drastically during the winter and card sales have been really good this season. I also chose the photo I posted August 21st as a reference for a painting. I loved the comp, the lighting and I especially liked the silhouette of the grasshopper showing through one of the leaf blades. To me, it's little unexpected details like this that make a painting special. I've also played around with a couple of possible additions. See above.

Nick Simmons has mentioned several times that a painting will tell you what size it needs to be. In the case of the peacock orchids my usual working size of 16" x 20" wasn't going to cut it. Right now I estimate this painting will probably wind up taking roughly a full sheet....22" x 30". I've been itching to paint in a larger format lately but have been dragging my feet. I have nowhere to store this large of a painting, nothing to safely store it in and because my studio is so small, hardly any room to even paint it. Minor issues........

Just Sketching

I'm on the hunt for inspiration at the moment. Although we are getting some much needed rain, these grey days are taking the wind out of my sails. I did find the cutest photo of two cats snuggling together on Paint My Photo, posted by Kathleen and I decided to use it for a sketch. Lately I've been using tracing paper in place of drawing paper just in case I like the sketch enough to pursue it further and decide to transfer it to working paper. Tracing paper is cheaper than good drawing paper, it can be drawn on easily enough and holds up to erasing remarkably well plus there's no need to trace my drawing, then turn around and transfer it to my working paper. It saves a step.

The challenge here was to fix an area of the larger cat's face where it meets the head of the kitten. In the photo the eye closest to the viewer is kind of smooshed and distorted so it needed some tweaking. Once again, I'm posting this mostly for my own benefit to see if my changes 'read' correctly.