Merry Christmas to All and to All a Good Night

A No Pressure Pencil Exercise: Three Princesses

                                Close-ups

 

This drawing was done from a photo for a weekend

drawing event.  It is a pencil sketch, 81/2 X 11 inches. 

When really relaxed and using junk paper and pencil,

when there is absolutely no pressure to draw well,

you can be free and relaxed with your line.  You

can make lines filled with life and movement…

COMMITTED, BRAVE  lines drawn with ABANDON.

The secret is to do this when under pressure or tense

because you are using expensive materials.  The secret

to solving this is  to work around others and to use

and destroy some nice papers without sadness because

you have learned something.  Maybe not something

astonishing but something as simple as “ I need to vary

my line more.”  This simple understanding is really worth

much more than a sheet of paper.

I have included  two close-ups for you to see  my line.

It was done on junk paper with mechanical pencil… a NO

pressure exercise.

 

 

Proportion: Christmas Calico Cat

6 x 6 Acrylic on stretched canvas.

Definition of Calico Cat: Calico refers to the color 
pattern of the cat not the breed.  The color pattern 
occurs in a non-predictive manner.    

I have been on a quest to capture the essence "catness ". 

I have struggled with the facial proportions.  I must be 
painting my mental image of "catness" and not what is 
really there.  I have never owned a cat and I believe 
familiarity with an animal makes it easier to under-
stand its proportions.  With this painting I kept 
stopping and putting it aside, so I could look at it 
with fresh eyes and evaluate where I was 
proportionally off. This was very helpful since my 
original painting was off in the relationship of the ears 
to the head and the length of the face from the nose 
down. This painting is closer to looking convincing 
than many I have done. After I finished it I asked 
myself why? Yes, my measurements and angles 
are more accurate.  I started to investigate cat 
facial proportions and found that pentagonal symmetry 

is applicable to a cat face, as well as to many other 
creatures. We as humans love symmetry.  We find

beauty in it.  Maybe this is why I like this cat painting 
better than most I have done.

Exercise: Two Hour Portrait: Old Man

I posted this larger so that you can see the brush strokes.  It is  acrylic, 8 x 10 inches on stretched canvas.  It was done in 2 hours.  Portraits can easily be overworked. I wanted to limit my time so that could not occur.  Yes, I am guilty of overworking, just like many of you. It is quite easy to keep changing and changing, but after a point the freshness is gone.  I am not a professional portrait painter, but I do enjoy painting people with character evident on their faces.  I also love brush stroke.  When I paint, I want the brush stroke to show.  I do not want it to look like my colored pencil paintings, which are very realistic.  The smallest brush I used was a # 7 old, frayed. round.  I also used a 1/4 and a 1/2 inch flat brush. The flats help to define the planes, the round makes the lines.

Hippocampus

 This first photo is after 2 hours and 15 minutes

I put in two more hours to finish.

Done from a photo for the October 12 weekend Drawing Event.  Acrylic on stretched Canvas 8 x10 inches. Living on a peninsula between the Sea of Cortes and the Pacific Ocean, sea life is very much a part of life here.  Some years ago in Magdalena Bay on the Pacific side of the peninsula, I was lucky enough to see a  live seahorse. 

Pacific Sea Nettle

Colored pencil on dark blue Colorfix paper.  Around the edge of the painting you can see the paper color.
I used Prismacolors.  On the dome of the jelly where I wanted a smooth, shiny, blended surface, I used a stiff brush to blend the colors together. The painting is 6x6 inches. I took the photo at the Aquarium of the Bay in San Francisco. I am fascinated by these beautiful, monsters of the deep.

It has been a very long time since I really enjoyed doing a painting.  But this was fun, quick and a bit abstract.....making  all of my many practice paintings worth it. 

Three Hour Colored Pencil Sketch... The Fawn

The Fawn is Prismcolors on coffee colored Mi-tientes paper 6 x 7 1/2 inches.  It was done from a photo for the October 6, Wetcanvas Drawing Event.  It is a practice piece done simply for the enjoyment of making art. There are so many reasons not to produce work. I am not in the mood,  I am not engaged by the photo, there is just too much detail, it won't be a masterpiece, I don't like how it looks as I begin, it isn't perfect, my measurements are off........and on and on.  I am sure if you are reading this blog, you have experienced these thoughts.
But, this summer I visited the studio of  Joaquin Clausell (1866-1935). He is a Mexican Impressionist. His studio is located in Mexico City, in a wonderful old building, now the City Museum.  He used his walls to practice upon.  There are no canvases in his studio now.  There are just four walls painted from floor to ceiling with small works. It appears that he used these walls for practice areas.....to work out problems, to think about composition, or to simply to play at the end of a day.  It is a breathtaking, enchanting glimpse into the mind of a practicing artist. This was certainly not meant to be a display of his finest works, but it shows us much more, his problems, his sometimes not so perfect solutions, and some amazingly fresh masterpieces. This all came about through PRACTICE.
So, if you ever get a chance to visit his studio, please do, you will not be disappointed


So here is my practice piece after 2 hours.

 

And after 3 hours.