This week's sketches

The weather has been so beautiful these past couple of days! Last night we opened all the windows and enjoyed the cooler temps. After it had turned dark, we retired to the bedroom and DH promptly fell asleep so I had planned to do some sketching, but a noise from outside caught my attention...a sound that made my hair stand on end. I went to the kitchen window and listened...off in the near distance (probably on the other side of the field behind our house) was a howling...but it certainly didn't sound like a dog, and besides, there are no houses in the direction of the howl. This was a very high pitched, wavery howl.....the only animal I can think of in this area that would howl like that is a coyote. I slipped out the patio door and stood on the deck and listened. It spooked me so bad that I quickly came back inside and locked the door. I stood again at the kitchen window and hear muffled yelping VERY near. Got to remember to keep an eye on our dog Casey when I let her out in the middle of the night!!

This morning...another gorgeous morning... I had the pleasure of sitting on the deck listening to the birds chirping. Jays, finches, cardinals and the most distinct, the cry of a hawk down in the woods. I never realized they had two very different distinct sounds and wasn't sure what it was until it took off from a grove of trees beside the house and landed in a tree in our woods. There it sat for a long time, crying....

Didn't get much sketching done this week...just the two below. I stopped off at the library this morning and came home with an armload of books. Pen and Ink Sketching by Peter Caldwell; Drawing in Pen & Ink by Claudia Nice; Creative Pen & Ink Techniques; and The Drawing Handbook by Frank Lohan. This should keep me busy for a while!

(Seems these scanned darker than the original sketches so I tried to do a white "fill" on the picture of the girl with lamb. Looks like I missed a couple of dark spots! Oh well, at least you can get an idea of the finished sketch!)

Another Barn

I absolutely love drawing old barns! This one was sketched first in 2b pencil then detailed in pen and ink. I fell in love with the original 1943 lithograph "Barns at Glen Gardner" by artist, Wanda Gag when I was looking through some books on Barns and decided to include it as one of my art studies on old barns. It took me approximately 5 hours to complete. I'm beginning to love working with pen and ink and it is sooooo much easier than I thought it would be! I just may try doing another on larger paper so that I can frame it. The Pen and Ink Techniques book says that a pen and ink sketch looks better framed if the picture doesn't go all the way to the edge of the paper. Thanks to the EDM group for inspiring me to start drawing again! I hadn't picked up the pen to draw in 2 years until I found them. THANKS to everyone for the inspiration you have given me with all your wonderful art!!

Newest Sketch!

This is how I spent my lunch hour today! I guess it wasn't so bad that I didn't have the car today (DH's car wouldn't start and he had to take me to work) because if I did, I wouldn't have attempted drawing this! It has its flaws but in all, I am very pleased with it as I have never tried people in pen and ink. I do know that I need to save my pennies and buy some artist grade watercolors. I used a brush and watercolor pencils, applying the wash with the brush instead of direct pencil to paper. It is amazing how engrossed I can become when drawing...the hour flew by.....didn't touch my apple or take one sip of my Pepsi that turned warm as I sketched!

Pen and Ink studies of barns

Being the "country girl" that I am, barns are one of the few buildings that I love to draw. My problem is that after I spend so much time in drawing in pen and ink, I am afraid to try watercolors on them for fear of ruining the drawing! I definitely need more work on drawing trees and the leaves. I overworked the 1st drawing to the point of ruining the values of the picture as a whole.

I love drawing in pen and ink and enjoy it even more than graphite. All three of these were drawn without the pencil sketch first and even though there are blantant errors, I really don't mind them! These were practice sketches I did from the book "Pen and Ink Techniques" by Frank Lohan. My next barn sketch I want to try from a photo. There aren't many barns here that have this much character and I would feel funny (and a bit unsafe) sitting along the side of a country road sketching all by myself!

Catnapping

Having worked lots of overtime in the past week, getting up at 3:30am each morning, I frequently find my DH dozing on the couch in the evenings. He is usually in bed by 8pm when he has to get up early, but last night he found that there was a Sopranos marathon on TV, and he was quickly hooked! He managed to doze off a couple of times while he was watching it! This sketch was done very roughly in graphite pencil before he turned over (probably in less than 1 minute!) then I added the details later. He looks alot younger in the picture because I didn't add all his "character lines"! ;) It's pretty close to his likeness though.