Sketch Book Series: Commentary (August 2011)
Ten years later and I’m still sticking to my story.
Tag Archives: practice
Quarantine Portrait Series: Self Portrait with Baseball Cap
The thing about quarantine is, one runs out of things to do. I’ve run out of subjects, so I am concentrating on self portraiture. This one needs a bit of improvement. I hope that you, dear readers, bear with me while I improve my skills. I’ll try to keep things interesting.
Quarantine Portrait Series: Self Portrait, 2nd Iteration
I improved a bit with today’s self portrait. I augmented the pencil sketch with inked lines for shading and definition of edges.
More: No Power
I tried to schedule my last ‘No Power’ post, but it went right out. I hope I can share with you this watercolor practice wash that I did today.
Toastmasters Club Practice
Cloud Practice Times Four
I divided my 12×9 watercolor block into four sections. I need a lot of practice representing clouds in watercolor. Instead of painting a generic cloud, I used one of my photographs (previous practice sessions are here: Gray Clouds in Front of Cloud Line…; and here: Watercolor Cloud Studies – First Trial.) Future practice sessions will […]
Scrambled Faces
While the sketchbook is a place for practice, I devote most pages to portraits. Faces are an important aspect of portraits, but there are factors: gesture; posture; placement and surroundings, to name a few. The sketch below is face-drawing practice.
Confusion of Overlapping Figures
Among the troubles facing a “plein air” sketcher of people is that they move. This happened when I started the sketch below. I started drawing a young man with a blue mohawk. He was still during my first 30 seconds of sketching but moved on and another clerk took his place. I changed my focus […]
Face Time – Practice
Usually, waiting rooms are filled with people. Today the receptionist was the sole person there and only visible from the neck up thanks to the high counter surrounding her. When I was done, her likeness looked like the ones you see on foreign coins. Unsatisfying. Fortunately, I had another opportunity to sketch. A young man […]
Warmup – Moon Reflections
I really want to move on from reflections but, being somewhat compulsive, I must complete the course of my study in the Tate Watercolor Manual.* The next exercise again relies on preservation of white. In watercolor, the brightest tone possible is the unpainted surface of the paper. Today’s warmup exercise: I used neutral tint, a […]
