Life Drawing Session - Shades of Grey

I wanted to play around with lights and shadows, so I grabbed a photo (so, no, not actually a life session, but I'm keeping the blog titles similar for orginization sake) and tried drawing it with just black, instead of shading everything in. I always love the way sections can be entirely missing, like the edges of the leg and arms, and yet the brain fills in what's missing. I was paying more attention to the shadows than the drawing, so the details are a little off, but  I like the way it turned out anyway.

I took this sketch and made a small watercolour from it, done in washes of grey-ish navy and brown watercolour, and black ink.

Currently for sale on Etsy.

A New Studio

I'm finally moved into my new, tiny condo. I really like how it's turned, including my postcard collection: 

The print on the top right that says 'People Are Allowed Not to Like It' is one of my favourite pieces. I'm going to get it framed whenever I move somewhere with a bit more wall space. I love it after going to art school, where we had to very snobbily condemn such mundane vocabulary. We only used 'succesful' or 'unsuccesful', never 'good' or 'bad', and 'like' was reserved for the uncultured and uneducated, how dare they.  Though, one should note that this does not apply to the food, as I also have a postcard that says 'Make Your Own Damn Dinner'.

My studio now consists of the eat-in nook (ledge, to be more accurate) in the kitchen, and the cupboard underneath it:

That's the cleaned up and organized version. You don't even want to know what's in my storage room. There will be no painting while I live here, only nice, flat, easily stored drawings and prints. I've got a big roll of newsprint, and I'm going to spend a lot of time simply working on some drafting skills. Here's my first little drawing. It has actually turned out very well, despite the fact that I can't find a pencil sharpner. I'm a little disappointed it isn't on better paper, in fact. Why can't I ever find a pencil sharpner? I do have about 30 pencils, however, so I'll simply go through them instead.

B&W Garter - getting the technique now

Here's my second try at using charcoal and oil paint. I learned quite a bit from the Horses experiment a couple of days ago. I did fewer layers, and after the first two I simply put down a layer of glazing medium and then drew into that (instead of the other way around). Much of the detail and most the actual lines stayed in the paint. I then scratched out some of the charcoal, which added more detail. You can see it in the close-up:

I'm really happy with how it turned out because you get enough information to really read the different textures, like the lace, but it has all the softness of the charcoal mixed with oil paint of the first painting.


This painting is for sale on Etsy.