A face a day (12): farmers

Some more quick portrait sketches, (from the Drawing Lab book, a face a day exercise) some better than others. I´m practicing doing pen sketches with no pencil pre-sketch - so every mark is final! I´m also practicing doing it fairly quickly like an on-the-spot sketch, rather than the larger portraits that I spend hours on. The sketch above and the larger ones below are about 1.5 to almost 2 inches tall and are done with a very fine 0.05 technical pen. The smaller ones are about an inch tall.

The sketches are of photos of famers in the Station Country book, about farming throughout New Zealand. The farmers tend to be outside in the photos, squinting into the sun!

A face a day (11): drawing pensiveness

Another portrait from the face a day exercise in Carla Sonheim´s book Drawing Lab. This one is of Dr Weir from the tv show Stargate Atlantis. She is supposed to be pensive, staring into the distance. It makes me think, what makes a person look pensive, as opposed to sad, concentrating etc? I think drawing pensiveness entails having the eyes squinting slightly, but the cheekbone muscles not raised (as they would be in a smile). The rest of the face is also totally slack - especially the jaw, which should be loose, and a little forward, I think.

I haven´t concentrated as much on shadow, or value, as my plan is to go over this sketch in pen and ink. I almost can´t bear to though, in case I mess it up... I used H, HB, 2B, 6B, 8B pencils, and a blending stick slightly.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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...

A face a day

One of the exercises in the Carla Sonheim´s Drawing Lab book is to draw a face (or two) a day. So I thought I´d start that, as drawing people is something I´m not that confident with. This person is actually slouching on a chair, looking sideways over her shoulder a bit, but you can´t quite tell that because I didn´t draw the arms, lol... Note to self - draw the arms a bit more next time!