I was playing with some Derwent Inktense blocks the other day, using them to draw on top of a very bland pastel drawing that I didn’t like. I let my imagination lead the way, which is something I rarely do and should do more often. It’s Christmas so I put my imaginary head in a paper hat, like the ones you get out of a Christmas cracker.
Christmas is a family time of year and I’ve been looking back through my sketchbooks to find sketches of my relatives. The advantage of drawing family is they’re FREE hahaha 😀 These are from December 2014 and January 2015, using a variety of materials, including Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens, graphite, compressed charcoal, and a free Markers app on my Samsung Galaxy 8 tablet.
Many years ago, Husb did a digital sketch of Sparta Puss. She was tiny then, but still had masses of Cattitude! She’s sixteen now and this drawing was done a few weeks before her first Christmas. It sums up her philosophy in life really. Anyway, Nadolig Llawen, Merry Christmas to you and yours. Never let your sprouts get soggy xxx
The last sketch that I posted of this model was drawn in a very stark way, but this pose inspired me to go a bit scribbly. It took 45 minutes and I used graphite onto a heavy vintage paper (make unknown). I spent a lot of time analysing the hand. I’m out of practice, I used to be able to draw hands quickly, I need to do some academic drawing exercises, I think. Back to Gray’s Anatomy.
Looking back through my sketchbooks to February 2015, I spotted Little Ming aka Ming The Merciless. She was a tiny, fluffy Tortoiseshell with one eye and a giant personality! She was a sweet, delightful, cuddly little cat UNTIL we took her to the vets. She had a red marker on her notes at the vets because she was so violent to them. We’ve had 7 cats in all and 3 have had red markers – all Naughty Torties!
This pose inspired me to do an analytical drawing, lots of measuring and spare, stark lines. The model is very thin and his features lend themselves to precision. It was a 15 minute pose and I used graphite onto a good quality but reasonably cheap cartridge paper.
I’ve seen a few printmakers using this hack on social media to see if their lino block is ready to print. It saves doing a proof print and getting the block inky. I sprinkled cornflour onto the block and scraped it across the lino with a business card (see below) to get the cornflour into all the nooks and crannies.
The cornflour goes into the areas that will print out white against the dark lino. This is my Mari Lwyd for the “old” New Year, Hen Galan, in January. I have done one annually for quite a few years now. Husb thinks this is the most sinister yet, but I think the Mari Lwyds are funny.
I think it’s ready to print, in black, and I will use chine collé to highlight the ribbons and flowers.
It’s 7 weeks since I started back at life drawing at Swansea Print Workshop after a long break (see here) and here are the warm-up sketches. I’m aiming to improve my portrait drawing over the next year. These range between 5 and 15 minutes, using a graphite block onto a good quality but cheap cartridge paper.
These are the final three portrait drawings I did recently at Swansea Print Workshop‘s weekly life drawing group. I did these in the final hour of the session, she maintained the same pose so I was able to really look and analyse what I was seeing and try and be accurate. I’ll be choosing one of these to develop into a linocut print and I worked to the exact size of the lino block, 10 x 15cms. Not sure which I’m going to choose though.
I love drawing this model at the Swansea Print Workshop’s life drawing group, she has such a fantastic face. I’m focusing on portrait drawing for the next year or so and I’m getting faster at drawing a reasonable likeness. This is a 25 minute pose, drawn in graphite onto a heavyweight vintage paper (no watermark).
scribblah 