Lily - WIP

No doubt I've mentioned that one of my favorite drawing books is Drawing for Dummies by Brenda Hoddinott.  I'll clarify here that I mean the first edition, because there is also a second edition.  The publisher got someone else to do most of the work for the second edition, and used artwork from several contributors, so there's a lot of difference between the two books.

At the end of most chapters in the first edition, there is a project to complete that helps let you know if you've understood the material presented in that chapter.  For Chapter 14, beginning on page 185, the project is titled Lovely Lily.

The lesson as written is done in graphite, but I wanted color, so I used my set of 150 Prismacolor Premier colored pencils after I had achieved an acceptable outline; from that point on, I disregarded the project instructions. I did not complete the shadows or highlights, which are both important and something on which I tend to do substandard work, therefore, I'll label this a WIP... because I can still go back and correct and/or revise the drawing.

The scan you'll see here was done in May, and shows the progress on Lily that I had achieved as of the end of April, 2013. This drawing is on cheap paper, which I cut to 8X10 inches to fit a frame I have on hand. I foolishly disregarded the orientation of the paper when I began to sketch my flower, using the horizontal, or landscape orientation when I could have used the portrait orientation to better advantage, so the version you see here has had the resulting excess white space cropped off of each end for better display.

For The Birds

This bird might be a little difficult to see. Some of my lines aren't as dark as others... but that's okay at this stage, since it's an in-progress scan of a sketch I plan to paint. As usual, I've drawn a subject from drawspace.com. Lesson J07 is about using a grid to establish proportions in your drawing - which is what I attempted to do here; only I liked the little bird in the lesson so much I wanted to draw him... so I did the best I could...

In my search for a wren with similar markings, I ran across this blog with a photo of an absolutely perfect specimen of a male Superb Blue Fairy Wren.  Curious as to what the female looks like, I took a look at some of the other entries on the same blog. I knew she wouldn't be as colorful, but thought she might still make interesting sketch material.

Three Skulls, after Cézanne

My version of Cézanne's famous painting. You can see the original here: http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/80336 (well, okay, that's really just a more accurate reproduction of the famous painting), you'd have to go to Chicago to see the real deal. Mine is Graphite on Mead Academie heavyweight sketchbook paper. Roughly 7.25 inches high by 11 inches wide.

My brain must have been on vacation when I watermarked this... It's among drawings I did late in 2008, not a 2009 effort.  My sketch book tells the truth... when I bother to date the work.

Drawing A Dog

In Progress Sketch

The dog is from Drawspace lesson B08 - Seeing Shapes in a Photo of a Dog's Head.

This scan still isn't as clean as I would like (lots of black spots were removed in PSP that are NOT on my sketch).... Guess that means it's time to clean the scanner glass again. :(  Otherwise, I'm happy with this sketch - as far as it goes.  I plan to develop the subject a bit more and transfer the drawing to watercolor paper to add color.  Right now, it's just in my cheap sketchbook that I got from Office Depot.  The paper is 9 inches square, 45lb., acid free with a small amount of texture to it.  Very pleasant to work with - takes the eraser better than some of the more expensive papers? - Go figure. Sketch pad has brand name of FORAY on it - the capital letters are theirs, not mine. Paper is white but my scanner wanted to read it as grey.  I had to play with brighness and contrast to get the scan to resemble my sketch... and now it does - except the lines I drew aren't quite as dark as they appear on the scanned copy... and, of course, I may not have removed all the extraneous black spots.