A face a day (10) in pen

I´m doing some more tiny pen and ink sketch portraits, about 1 inch high. I think these turned out OK - mainly because I am using a 0.05 pen now. Its quite tricky as once a pen mark is made there is no going back!

I´m finding it easier to draw the hair, jaw, cheeks etc first, and then move onto the facial features. Although I am still having trouble with eyes and mouths! Practice practice practice!

A face a day (9) in pencil

Another face, drawn as part of one of the exercises in Carla Sonheim´s Drawing Lab book. I´ve also been reading Giovanni Cirvadi´s Complete Guide to Drawing, which is a great book. Although I didn´t quite draw this fully in the technical way, I did first do the facial structure sketch & I tried to crosshatch and pay more attention to shadows and reflected light etc. On reflection, given that the subject was in a dark room, with lots of shadows, I should have made the background darker too.

I think it turned out OK and does look like the character Ladon Radim from the tv show Stargate Atlantis, or at least I think so. Although my husband didn´t recognise him at all. Other people think I´ve tried to draw a picture of my husband, who kind of looks vaguely similar perhaps...

I did the drawing from a still picture of the tv show, in which the person in the drawing is in the process of protesting his innocence, but you are not supposed to quite know whether to believe him or not. So there is supposed to be some element of concern, but also of insincerity there, I think. Maybe even some exasperation.

Below is my first go. I thought he just looked worried.

Below is the same pic, with my first go at using a blending stick. I probably over-blended, and I unthinkingly blended over some of the sections of reflected light. I took them out again with an eraser in very top pic. I think the blending also made him look too young, so I added some detail in again in the very top pic too.

Lotta Jansdotter Sun Hat

This is the Sun Hat from Lotta Jansdotter´s book Simple Sewing. I thought I´d see whetehr I like this pattern better than the one I made a few days ago. I like the crown of the hat, but the brim, not so much. I shortened the brim, as the word in blogland was that it was huge. Even the massive amounts I cut off it weren´t enough. Althought I like the ones other people have made, and I think they look great on them, for some reason this hat has a Pride and Prejudice bonnet look to it. I´m sure a supermodel could pull that look off, and people would be looking for their own lampshades, but on me, I´m thinking urgh. It looks a bit better with the brim turned up, but really, not alot can save this hat, as from the back it just looks like a bonnet with the front turned up. I won´t make it again!

Sketchbook Challenge

The theme for this month on the Sketchbook Challenge website is Imaginary Animals...

Sun hat from my own pattern

With summer coming, and no nice sunhats in the shops, I decided to make my own pattern. I really like the hats that turn up at the brim, but they don´t seem to sell them anymore. Also, I really hate tight hats - they give me a headache, so making a hat with my own pattern to fit my head seems the only option.

It isn´t really a project from the book Design if Yourself: Patternmaking Simplified, but I did use some of the techniques in it to make the pattern.


Above: the inside lining.

Instructions for making the pattern below (fits my head - 56.5 cm circumference, measured above eyebrows...

Imaginary Animals (1)

My first entry in this month´s Sketchbook Challenge theme: Imaginary Animals. India ink, watercolour, and my 6 year old´s sparkly pens...

My husband gets automated text messages from the railway service about late trains etc, and sometimes we lie in bed before the alarm goes off, hearing a series of beep-beep-beeps, and knowing: Ah, the trains are very late, probably for reasons which are so-very-much-not-fixable in the standard 15 minutes of the ¨This train will be 15 minutes late for operational reasons¨ excuse. Anyway, above is one of the many scenarios which I have thought in my mind, as to why the morning trains may in fact be running late: An Imaginary Animal!

I´ve been working through Nita Leland´s book Exploring Color, and I tried to make the animal´s gray by mixing opposite colours. It didn´t quite work out the way I thought! A bit greener than the light gray I had in my head, but still, I think it turned out a more interesting colour than if I had just chosen ¨gray¨ from the paintbox. It does take quite a lot of courage to put green on the paper, and then red, when you really want gray!

Here is the preliminary pencil drawing sketch. It is actually rather liberating to draw something that has no constraints of looking like a real animal.

A gratuitous picture of a beach near Dunedin, South Island, New Zealand.