The final few from the October challenge:


Romeo - quickie sketch, acrylic and pen, worked from life, no undersketching

Another of Romeo, quickie, from life, no undersketching, diluted acrylic (paynes grey)

graphite stubby, quickie, from life

graphite stubby, quickie, from life

A quick Aussie, worked by loose eye from photo, black acrylic diluted and washed

NOW... since the October challenge got to be a bit of a flop I signed up for WC's page-a-day challenge for November. I decided not to force myself to stick outside my comfort zone but simply do whatever appealed and being okay with the fact some days I have a good bit of time (La at school, Lily cooperates with a nap, not lots of other chores, bits of time snuck in waiting for dinner to cook, kids go to bed easy) and somedays (sick child/ren, not feeling great myself, heaps of stuff to do, La in a full on mood etc.) I will barely have time to scratch myself let alone sketch. I used the same style paper - A5, 100gsm, white paper. Unfortunately a few of the images have a shadow from my camera taking the pictures. Here's the first few days of that:

Day 1: Ink

Day 2: Ink and acrylic

Day 3: Ink and acrylic

Day 4: Ink only (eep, obviously my first kitty... poor Jaspy!)

Day 5: Ink kelpie head - actually about life size here

Day 6: Jahzy and Sam (people are hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhharrrrrdddd *whines* Even using grid reference for proportions it was impossible to define features and muscles without badly representing how much nicer my poor victi... er... subject, looks in life. ~_~

more from WC sketchbook in october

Ballpoint pen echidna - and oh my... as it happens, shading in ballpoint pen is a pain in the bum!

Attempt to loosen up my style - Lily and the dogs

Contented duck - ink

Cinnamon - watercolour pencils

Figure 8 lamb - his coat is done in nothing but figure 8's... fat ones, skinny ones, long ones, short squashy ones, big ones, tiny ones, sideways, angled and twirled around ones but figure 8's all the same. Weird sense of humor I have.

Fresh

King parrot - part of the October Sketchbook In A Month Challenge
Derwent Watercolour Pencils and Aquarells

October Challenge

So, the idea for the October "Sketchbook In A Month" journal was to expand from the only thing I've ever drawn (dogs) but still stay 'close to home' with subjects I'm familiar with.

The point was to practice and experiment, not refining things to the point it's art but just to learn and develop myself. I'm cringing a bit but posting them anyway under that reason.

First up - pekin hen Derwent Watercolour Pencils and 0.8mm UniPin pen.

First attempt (hey I DID say attempt) at drawing a human! EEP! A picture of Laurent, hamming it up. Pencils. 3H, HB, 2B, 6B


Lily, with Timtam the lamb. There is more detail than shows as I photograph rather than scan them. Pencils, um... 3H, B, HB, 2B, 5B? I think?

Cute little finch we saw on a bird feeder at Yarram. For the birders, it's a Red-browed Finch or Neochmia temporalis temporalis. Derwent watercolour with one or two Aquarell colours I think. Surprisingly the paper doesn't buckle too bad even though it's 100gsm!

Flyball doggie. It was supposed to be my girl Hope but I'm NOT happy... normally I'd bin it and I'm struggling with the fact that these are meant to be relatively quick/unfussy/nonperfect sketches and posted with their warts and all. Derwent Watercolour pencils.

One of my neighbors ganders being a bit haughty while trying to decide if I have goodies. ;p Background was totally unintentional - my daughter grabbed my arm while I was drawing and made a big old mark. Crud... what to do? Pretend it was intentional and hatchmark everything! Not great but such is life! Unipin fineline ink 0.8mm. The marker is WAY too fat for drawing a white bird where delicate lines are called for!

Well, being me I've gotten annoyed with background v 3.0 also looking crappy on my other puppy so what to do? Start a second painting of course. Here's the start of "Charlie" a 5x7" acrylic on canvas Still rough of course.

Meanwhile I sketched this one:

"Rainy Day Blues" 5x7 Ink and paper

And in the fine tradition of "bite off more than you're likely able to chew", I signed on for a "Sketchbook In A Month" for October on the Wet Canvas site. One member had a da Vinci sketchbook they'd not much used, which had a little blurb in it stating that if you wanted to learn to draw well you should fill a sketch book every month. (In other words, practice lots!) Well it was decided to run that as a challenge and a bunch of people signed on for it with a choice of sketchbook size and number of pages. I bought an Eraldo di Paolo, A5, 60pgs. While not the most flash it's still nice looking and portable but... that will mean filling about 2 pages every day! A tad ambitious someone also working around small kids, dogs etc!

Some quickie sketch studies

Marker/pen on regular old art diary paper. Most about 5x7"-ish... I needed a break from trying to wrestle out what the heck I want to do about the background of my poor puppy painting. Sheesh, who'd have thought it'd be the background that'd be the hardest bit?!?

"Judges Choice"

"Summer Walk"

"Veterans Day"

"I Can Haz A Belly Rub?"

"Future Flyball Champion" (Positive thinking hey?)

The old foggie chasing after the birds who were blatantly unperturbed coasting high above her, probably wondering what the mad thing was runnning in great circles for.

Acrylic experiement

My grandma used to do oil painting and she was quite good! I've said for awhile I want to go have some lessons and learn to paint but lack the time and funds to do oils, so when I found myself in the dollar store looking at canvases I decided to get a little set of acrylics, a canvas, some brushes and have have a dabble.

I sketched this little fellow, roughed him in over about 15 mins of breakfast the next morning and started in on the details today. The background is going to change don't worry!

And here he is again after about half an hour. Hopefully over the coming week I can find a bit of kid-free time to work on him as he's still in need of a lot of refining!

And a closer up view of his widdle fluffy face...

Puppy is an Aussie Shepherd bred by the late Robyn Sutcliff of Sugargum Kennels in 2006. The sire was Trig aka Gr Ch Dykinta American Trilogy and the dam Elle (I think!) aka Ch. Sugargum Strike it Rich. I'm not which pup as they were all rather alike in looks! LOL

Verity

Not having posted for ages probably makes me the big slacker EVER but in the interest of attempting to be slightly better...

"Verity"

8x10
Watercolour pencil on cardstock

I'm still not totally happy with this portrait. I have put a number of previous ones in the fire because they didn't capture her right. This still doesn't. But I needed to make myself finish one or I'd have never done so I think. And I see technical details like I had a hard time with the right eye because the photo I used was blurry and had bad exposure. She had iris colombomas so she tended to squint where the lights (coming from the right in the photo, hence the 'softer' right eye) were but I had to change the lighting a bit in the painting. The muscles around the jaw aren't quite right either and lack definition and rigidity near the corner of the lip while being too soft under the jaw. But I wanted to use the watercolours and working in colour again because I find them harder than pencil to use with any sort of realism and I wanted to save this picture because it wasn't good enough to print but I couldn't bear not to keep it anyway so from that point of view I'm happy with it.

5x7 watercolour/pencil
This is another older one just after I'd got the new set of watercolour pencils. Suffice to say I have learnt to use more watercolour technique since by FAR since this one! LOL I'm not sure who the dog is. He was a dog brought to one of the ASCV shows but I think just as a pet.