Daily Sketching – Flower Pots, Wine, Books

Catching up.

11/7 – Clay Pots (from an image on Pinterest)


11/8 – Wine Glass (mine!)


11/9 – Bookstore (again, an image from Pinterest)


And this is what I usually have to deal with when I take photos of my drawings:

Daily Sketching - Vote!

So I started drawing tonight, not sure what I was going to sketch. Dinner was on the stove - sausage and cabbage - and I thought, "Why not sketch a cabbage?"



Why not, indeed. I didn't stop there. I added an onion, a bell pepper, squash and to mix it up a bit, a lemon.


And THEN I though, "Um, Duh. Why don't you sketch something topical, like Oh I don't know, the election?!" So I did this.



I voted. I hope you did, too!

Daily Sketch - Bluebirds

A couple of bluebirds, sketched from a random image I found online.



BONUS SKETCH
Yesterday, after posting my dress sketch, I felt like drawing a bit more, and she emerged. Isn't she cute?

Daily Sketch - Dress on Form

Hey! I'm finally putting my Pinterest pins to use! Here's today's sketch, based on a dress I pinned just today.



Just a note. The sketchbook shown here is just a little 4"x6" book I can keep handy. I won't be using it for all of my daily sketching, but it's a great size to take anywhere.

Sketching

I've decided that I'm going to do a sketch a day for November. I know some use this month to write a novel, grow facial hair, or express gratitude each day. I have only fleetingly longed to scribe a novel, have no interest in encouraging my facial hair growth (even for a good cause), and really like the idea of practicing gratitude, but I thought I'd use it to push myself into the habit of sketching daily. No grand schemes for creating a masterpiece, just whatever strikes my fancy at the time.

Since I'm getting a late start posting (but have actually sketched on each of the three days so far comprising this month), I'll post all three today.

November 1: Holding On

Just a girl I felt like drawing, flowy dress and hair, just holding on.

November 2: Red Carpet

I drew her face and she seemed like a starlet, so I added the glamorous dress and little clutch. I love her "finger waved" hair.

November 3: Balloons!

I had an image on my fashion illustration inspiration board and finally decided to put it to use. So cute!

Art Journal Play - Seeing Faces

In case you hadn't figured it out already, I love to draw faces. That's been true since high school. I would lose myself sketching stylized faces. I went a very long time without putting pencil (or paint) to paper but never lost the pull to draw faces.

Having immersed myself back in art over the last year and a half has reminded me of that pull. I've taken various on-line art courses that have me drawing more and more faces, specifically I Heart Drawing by Jane Davenport. Love her, LOVE this course.

I have a couple of art journals going, and in most, I have half-finished backgrounds mostly the result of slapping my leftover paint on a page as not to waste it. This is one such page. I was flipping through the book, saw this page and thought it would be fun to paint a face over the top. I wish I'd gotten a shot before I worked on the face, but you can see quite a bit of it through the face.

I'm mesmerized by her. Sure, her eyes are a bit wonky and she's rather lopsided, but I think she's darling, if I do say so myself!

Finished – Untitled (for now) Woman

I finished it - finally! I wrote a WIP post way back in April (!) and am happy to say she's finally finished.

Some of the WIP:

(where I left off on the last post-following is later in the day after fixing her nose)

I anguished over where to go from just about the point I left her in late April. I knew I wanted paper flowers either in her hair or representing her hair, but kept putting off making the decision. I was afraid of "ruining" what I'd started.

So I made paper flowers.

Lots of paper flowers.

And after determining that I did NOT want her whole head covered in them, came up with a pleasing arrangement, took a photo so I'd know what I'd liked...

Then set about painting her hair. I also decided to add some stenciled, if illegible, words to the background. I just wanted to break things up a bit, add some more texture and interest, pull in more of the mixed media feel I was going for.

The inspiration photo I used showed some sort of barrette in her hair, so I fashioned one for my girl out of wire and a paper flower. I also added a wire "earring" to help tie things together.

The flower "eye" is made from light modeling paste and a flower stencil. I'm very pleased with how she came out even though I got very stuck for a long time. I needed to let go of feeling like I was going to "ruin" it or make a mistake. As Donna Downey says, "Forward motion." Just keep moving forward and the right things will emerge.