Mini sketches

I tried out a different techniques in some mini sketches.That is, just focusing on tones, and not intentionally drawing any lines at all. They are all just a series of squiggles.

This is just a doodle of different methods of stippling and shading. The building on the right is just a series of loose, almost dotted, rectangles, where the pen just touches the page about half the time, like a jackhammer. So most of the lines end up being vertical, but with no rhyme or reason to them, unlike traditional cross hatching. I quite like the feeling of unreality that this technique creates in a sketch.

Seal on the path up to Castlepoint Lighthouse, North Island, New Zealand

Worldwide Sketchcrawl # 39

The Worldwide Sketchcrawl was on Saturday and Wellington Sketchers took part for the first time. The weather was grey, drizzly, and rainy unfortunately! So we couldn't sketch along the Wellington waterfront as planned, and sketched inside the library instead. We sat at the windows looking out over Civic Square.

It was great to take the time to look out over the Square, and I had never noticed before how Egyptian it looks. There is the pyramid (duh), but also sculptures at the base of the stairs, and nikau palm sculptures. It all looked a bit Dr Who-y to me (I have a vivid imagination, and haven't had much sleep lately...), so I only sketched people walking towards the pyramid. Must get more sleep.

 

On the way back to the car with my family, the rain stopped briefly, and we had a look around. I tried a few times to fit one more sketch in, but didn't succeed. I coloured this in at home with my son's crayons. It is another of Wellington's amazing scuptures, this time a big wooden sculpture of a fish. From the angle of the path leading down to the water, it was kind of wierd seeing everything else lead to the water except the fish, who was kind of eternally stuck swimming in the greenery. If I had done it in portrait format, there was a crane on one of the buildings which (if you knelt down a bit) looked like it was trying to hook the fish. But I couldn't fit it in.

Sketching mischievous grins

Another portrait: a woman in a shawl. I quite liked this woman's slightly mischievous expression. I think sketching a mischievous smile involves sketching pursed lips, the cheeks raised, and the eyebrows raised but also tensed together (the muscles on the forehead tightened), so the eyes are not quite as pushed closed as in a grin. Charcoal on $2 shop paper. I had some trouble with my charcoal pencil again, leaving scratches in the paper but no charcoal.Although, I think I might have figured this out: it is a 2B charcoal pencil. I thought charcoal was charcoal.

Castlepoint, North Island, New Zealand

A few drawings

I tried out my charcoal pencil this afternoon. I am not sure what type of charcoal it is, and sometimes when I press with it, no mark comes onto the page, just a scratch. So it feels a bit erratic. Still, I like the dark tones you can get with charcoal.

I am not sure whether I like this sketch better with the background in, or just simple as below.

Finally, I did a tiny pencil sketch with 4B. I haven't sketched miniature portraits for so long, but I am happy with how this turned out.

Wanganui River, North Island, New Zealand

Line drawing over breakfast

Another breakfast sketch and doodle. This time I focused on line rather than tone. The people are mostly blind contour line drawings, although I tidied them up slightly afterwards and shaded them in. What are they looking at? Who knows...

Sketching around Wellington Station

I went to the Wellington Sketchers meetup which was at Wellington Station this time. It was a beautiful morning, so we went outside and sketched.

Wellington Station, with the morning sun breaking through the clouds. At this time of a Saturday morning, it is mainly tourists about. I've been trying to impart more emotion into my sketches, and as I drew this sketch, I was thinking ¨Whhhhoooaaaa¨. Although it was a lovely peaceful day, and this was a peaceful scene, I was more feeling a sense of disorientiation, finding myself in central Wellington in a place I haven't sat for many years, at a different time, without my family in tow. A normally busy place, that was not busy as I remember it. I think this sense of disorientation came through in the sketch.  I feel like I am looking down a lens, taking in quite a large scene from a distance, without any steadying sense of peripheral vision. At least, it makes me feel that, looking at it.

A fellow sketcher very kindly let me sketch her sketching. Having gotten my sense of disorientation out of my system with my previous sketch, I just tried to sketch the world normally here.

Wellington is full of little quirky surprises.  I have walked to Wellington Station many times, but never noticed the little train on top of the sign outside it.

I sketched a woman who sat down next to us to read a book.  She had interesting gauntlet gloves on.

I forgot to take a photo of the station while there, so my husband took one on the way home from work a few days later. It is a building that has always fascinated me, and I think I will definitely come back to sketch it again one day.

Pencarrow Lighthouse Mail Art

We recently did a bike trip to Pencarrow Lightouse, which is along the bike path from Eastbourne, along the Wellington harbourside. I thought I would draw a picture of our day as some mail art, more in a children's book illustration style. The paper that I used for this was quite thin. It didn't buckle with the watercolours, but it was a close thing.

 A rocky beach along the bike road to Pencarrow Lighthouse, Wellington Harbour, North Island, New Zealand