Stacked Up Along the Wall
This line up was a perfect opportunity to practice my (mostly) blind figure drawing. I did look at the paper to reposition the pen and to insert detail in some of the portraits.
Tag Archives: artistic expression
Man Sitting with Legs Crossed Then Changing Positions
I started with the shoes, as usual. Without looking at the paper, I moved my pen in concert with my eye: up one leg, a left at the trouser cuff, up some more, a twist and down the crossed leg to the other shoe. Everything was fine until the relaxed man suddenly hunched over and […]
Giant Clouds Dwarfing the Landscape
The scale of the clouds attracted me at first. Then it was the depth. There are dark grays in front of lighter grays; whites abutting grays; hard outlines against the blue sky and misty whites that dissolve. A recreation of this scene in pen or pencil would be a good way to expand drawing skill […]
Hot Idea Gets Out
It feels good to get back to abstraction. I have some vague notions of images I want to reveal, but no real pictures that I want to transcribe from inside my head. The watercolor below is a start.
Backgammon
I was witness to a backgammon tournament of sorts.
Layers of Clouds
This is the completed sketch from yesterday:
Young Woman on the Phone
Layers of Clouds (Underpainting)
I used lamp black and charcoal gray for the dark undersides of the clouds in this sketch. To soften the edges of the dark brush strokes (applied to dry paper), I diluted the pigment on the brush and drew it parallel to the initial stroke, as one would execute a graded wash. Toward the bottom […]
Woman with Pocketbook on Table
This sketch was done quickly, without looking at the page. I thought that this lady would get up at any moment. I’m told that the proper parlance for pocketbook (or ‘pocabook’, a term I remember from youth) is purse. Pardon my anachronism .
Cloud Practice 3: With Blue Skies
In these practice sketches, I tried several different techniques. First, I only partially removed the liquid mask. This resulted in a stippling effect in some of the clouds. I also laid down a second blue wash on the sky. I tried different ways of sculpting the clouds with gray and black pigments. In the second […]
