Pen and ink drawings - views

Gratuitous photo of the view of Wellington Harbour from our old house in Miramar, Wellington (sunrise)

A face a day (8) in india ink

Another sketch as part of the ¨draw a face a day¨ exercise in Carla Sonheim´s book Drawing Lab. This one is of British astronaut, Helen Sharman.

A face a day (pen)

I like how people can just draw a small sketch of someone in their journal, and I´m working towards drawing small sketches in india ink pen.

A face a week (6)

A girl looking at the view in the harbour. This month´s theme for the Sketchbook Challenge is ¨View¨.

I´ve been doing a lot of sketches of faces lately as part of the faces exercise in Carla Sonheim´s Drawing Lab book. Its going OK drawing a face where the face takes up most of the A5 page, but it is a whole ´nother thing making a small sketch of a face true to a likeness. So I´m practicing this for a while too. At the moment I´m doing some of my journal entries on separate pages and I´ll bind them together i na book when I have enough.

A face a week (5)

Flowergirl at a wedding. Another drawing as part of the ¨Face a Day¨ (or week) exercise in Carla Sonheim´s Drawing Lab book. H and 6B pencil. I´m still working on doing the full range of value, and blending shades. It has been quite a good exercise. I haven´t drawn faces since I was a teenager probably, and even after only 2 or 3 goes I think I´ve improved a bit. My husband thinks this girl looks psychotic. But she is only 8 years old, happens to have very dark eyes, and just very, very excited to be all dressed up at a wedding, I think!

Sketch for Hutt River linocut print

Here is a preliminary sketch (above) for a linocut print that I am working on. This is of the Hutt River, in Upper Hutt, New Zealand. The style of drawing is inspired by a print I´ve just seen on a blog. I had been working on some sort of linocut design of this scene for ages (right), and hadn´t been able to figure out how to convert it from a drawing to a linocut and make it more stylized and graphic. I see the mountains and hills from my house everyday, if not the river.

Face a week (4)

Another drawing as part of the ¨Face a Day¨ (or week) exercise in Carla Sonheim´s Drawing Lab book. H and 6B pencil. Must go and get a 4B pencil... My husband thinks that this woman looks psychotic too...Hmmm.

A face a week (3)

Another drawing as part of the ¨Face a Day¨ (or week) exercise in Carla Sonheim´s Drawing Lab book. I´m quite happy with this sketch. H and 6B pencil.

Matroshka bags

My final act as Education Officer for our Playcentre is to make some small presents for trainees. These are small calico bags printed with a matroshka stamp, which we then filled with chocolates. I made the cards from other hand-carved stamps I´ve made too.

A face a week (2)

I´m still working my way slowly, slowly, slowly, through the exercises in Carla Sonheim´s Drawing Lab book. I´m not quite managing a face a day, but am settling for a face a week now...

I´m also reading Misty Mawn´s Unfurling book, and am quite keen to try painting portraits at some point. But I´d like to practise drawing the faces a bit first. I´m not too sure how well I´ll go at adding colour.
Anyway, I drew this from a picture. I loved the girl´s huge expressive eyes, and slightly disbelieving look. I´m not sure whether I managed to capture that...

Handcarved chair stamp

I finished a quick stamp of a chair this week. Still needs a bit of a clean up when I get chance, but I´m quite happy with it.

Linocut ruru owls - my first commissioned stamp!

I carved this linocut stamp for an amazing puppet theatre business which two friends are starting up, Two Little Ruru. The wonderful ruru design of the stamp was done by the amazingly talented Kate.