One Drawing a Day; week 3 (sort of)

I've told you before about the 'Artsy Book Club'.  So I've been a little inconsistent this week or more, because some of the drawing assignments were a bit, um, 'inconvenient'.  The week started with an assignment called 'bountiful harvest'.  I drew the ingredients for that night's soup.

For the next day, I think the assignment was something like 'colorful carousel'.  With nothing like that around here to draw, I chose an alternate path, and set up a colorful still life of 2 papier-mâché Laurel Burch-inspired cats, 2 papier-mâché light bulb maracas, and a bunch of colorful scarves.

 Here's a photo of the still life.

 

The next assignments called for a bunch of people drawings, profiles, action, in cafés, at gyms, etc.  I wasn't particularly comfortable with the idea of drawing strangers eating in a cafe or in exercise mode, so I started simply with this drawing below, my husband relaxing on the couch.  I used a big fat rectangular stick of water soluble graphite, which I recently purchased.  I discovered I really liked being able to dip it in water and also swipe across the dry drawing with a wet paintbrush.

 

After that, I did some quick drawings of people at a meeting I attended.

And a couple of gals in my book club group.

 

One day, instead of the people-drawing assignment of the day, I finished decorating a new iPad cover for myself, using Sharpies, that I've been randomly working on for a while.

And instead of going to an exercise class for drawings of action and movement, I drew a couple of people shoveling snow on the nightly news.  And then my cat disrupted the process by sitting on my lap and demanding my attention.

 

And I'll finish with today's drawing.  The assignment was to use pastels to draw my home garden.  Since my garden is months away from blooming, I worked from a photo I took of pansies in my yard waiting to be planted along my path, last May.  Here's the drawing.

 

One Drawing a Day; week 2

In case you don't remember from last week, I'm participating in an online 'Artsy Book Club', the brainchild of blogger Cassie Stephens.  Our first book is One Drawing A Day, and we have just completed week 2 of the 6 week adventure! 

So week one started in a drab way, with the day 8 assignment to do three portraits of someone done in different media: one with charcoal, one with pencil, and one with ink (I used my bamboo pen again).  I'm not gonna lie; I was not feeling great and was grumpy when I started, and I got grumpier the more I drew.  Isolated in my grumpiness, I drew myself.  Here are drawings 1 & 3.  Drawing 2 is in hiding and has decided not to appear on the blog!  (Let me put it this way: am not particularly a fan of drawing with pencil.)

 

 

But then, wonder of wonders, the day 9 assignment finally let us start using color!  Hurray!  As per the instructions, I played with crayons,  first tracing my hand, and then adding letters, numbers, and whatever other symbols or doodles I wanted.  It was fun. 

On day 10 we had to do another portrait, using color inspired by light and mood, with pastel chalk and colored pencil for added line.  I decided to redeem myself by drawing myself yet again, attempting to smile even though I still had a touch of the sniffles.  

Day 11 assignment was to use watercolors washes for a quick sketch of an urban setting.  I put it off, claiming all sorts of excuses.  Day 12 was no better.  Using watercolor crayons we were supposed to make monoprints of a monument.  It was a monumentally unexciting idea to me, and... Well I put it off again.  I still haven't made up either of those days and don't know if I will.  But at least I did do some creative stuff, getting out in the fresh snow a bit with my camera.

Day 13 was a still life using colorful line. I tried it with colored pencils, didn't like it, and then tried again with water soluble crayons.  I wasn't crazy about it then, but I'm feeling better about it now.

Day 14 made me feel like myself again.  It was fun, and cheerful.  We were to use tube watercolor for shrubbery.  I don't have any tube watercolor but I do have gouache, and I haven't used it in years, so I thought it was time to get it out and use it.  The world is all white outside, but in my home I have a sunny bay window filled with happy house plants, so that's what I used for my subject.  The idea was to use no pre-drawing, just to squirt paint directly on the paper from the tube, and then use a wet brush to pull the color out in washes.  That's exactly what I did.  Here's my painting:

Hard to believe two weeks have already sped by since we began this project! I'm a little nervous about some of the challenges ahead, since the book will be sending us out to busy places to sketch people.  That seems intimidating, but I'll find a way to give it a try!

One Drawing A Day; week one

I have been participating in the Artsy Book Club, formed recently by blogger friend Cassie Stephens.  For our first book, we are following the exercises in a book called One Drawing a Day: a 6-week Course Exploring Creativity with Illustration and Mixed Media. by Veronica Lawlor.  The exercises encourage us to get out of our comfort zones, using materials and sometimes subject matter that might be in our usual (and comfortable!) repertoire.  We finish our first week today, so I thought I'd share my week's worth of drawing exercises with you.

Day 1: Still life with fine point pen

 My still life consisted of a beloved old camera from my college darkroom photography days, a stuffed alien, a demented looking Barbie, a troll doll, a barometer, and more.

 Day 2: Garden-like still life with dip pen and ink

 

Day 3: Study of a person (or perhaps hands) with bamboo pen and ink.  

My sleepy-eyed husband modeled for me, and as a result he ended up with a larger-than-life chin.  I just got a new bamboo pen, so I used it for a 2nd drawing, with white ink on black paper.

 

 

Day 4: Person or objects from around the house with charcoal to render value and fine point pen for added line. (I used a fountain pen.) 

 I didn't have a person available, so I used stuffed toys from around the house, including a sock monkey that I made, and Nelson the Adirondack black bear, who's cross-continental saga I detailed here on the blog, three years ago.  And how could I forget the stuffed dragon?

By the way, I know some of you have made sock monkeys with kids.  I thought it was absolutely one of the most challenging projects I ever did, with the sock unraveling as I tried to stitch it together.  So Flossie, my sock monkey, is my first and will be my last. 

Day 5: Person, with diluted ink  and watercolor brush; I used a 'neutral tint' ink as well as some black.

Day 6: A  garden with soft graphite pencils

It's the wrong time of the year for that around here, with snow everywhere, so I substituted one of my bay windows filled with plants as subject for this assignment.  I used 2B, 4B, and 6B pencils, as well as a big chunky graphite stick. Along with the drawing you can see my actual window.

Day 7: An outdoor scene with plenty of texture, using a mix of pens, ink, brush, and water.  

Again, I wasn't going to sit outside for this, so I decided to work from a photo on my PC, that I took in warmer weather.  It was a very challenging assignment, since my photo was bursting with autumnal colors, and I was drawing in tints of black ink.  The paper didn't like getting wet, and the pens didn't like drawing on the soggy paper.  On to better things tomorrow!!

One more day of just neutrals and values, and then I think we move on to color!   Yay!!!! I love color!!!