Hares And Colombians

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I’ve been doing a lot of drawings from British wildlife photos and I’ve started to cut little lino blocks from them. I’ll be taking these to Swansea Print Workshop soon to ink them up and print them on the old Columbian Press, one of my favourite pieces of machinery. I’ll probably use an oil-based relief/litho ink in black onto a white Japanese paper and limit the editions to 30 or 40 each.

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Here’s a Colombian, isn’t it lush? The one at the print workshop dates from 1855. I love antique machinery and tools.

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Anxious Cub

1393710234929Carrying on with some digital practice from photographs of foxes, I found an image of a rather anxious cub. Like all young animals, the eyes are much larger than adults while the faces are smaller and the distance between the nose and eyes is more compact. To find the source photos, I’ve just been googling British – fox – images and I’ve been shocked that there are a few horrible ones. Very upsetting. I can’t understand why people want to show off their cruelty. Barbaric.

This is drawn on my Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 using a free Markers app. I’ve laid down a mottled background before drawing and made several saves to produce a slideshow.

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Foxy Finale

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I’ve been taking part in a Facebook daily drawing challenge for February and this is the last one. The month’s flown by. I’ve done quite a bit of practice on my Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 and also been practicing drawing British wildlife from Internet stock photos. I’ve enjoyed it and I’ll probably carry on for a while longer. During the month I discovered how to do a slide show with the Galaxy, showing the development of some of my drawings, almost animations.

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hmmm…….animation…….there’s an idea………..

Bureaucracy!

Today was one bureaucratic mess! I’ve been planning something really big for months now and I was hoping to make it public today but bureaucracy has gotten in the way and I have to spend more time getting paperwork and forms together and travelling hundreds of miles to get the documentation I need. Pain in the neck!

So I’ve just had a nice cup of chamomile tea to calm me down, a toasted teacake to cheer me up (with Welsh farm salted butter, of course) and I sketched a fox. Quickly. And now goodnight 🙂

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The Quick Brown Fox

1393454448720I’ve no idea if the fox is quick – but the drawing is. It’s getting late and I need to blog quickly so here’s a speedy digital sketch done on my Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0. I used an Internet stock photo as the subject. I put in a background using several layers of light colours then scribbled away.

Sleeping Fox

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Bogged down in admin most of the day. Planning something big and the next 2 days are crucial. If it comes off, I can reveal all by the end of the week! Meanwhile, it’s hard to find the time to do anything creative so I’m keeping on with the practice drawings on my Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0. I thought I’d carry on scribbling wildlife as drawing animals is really challenging for me. I can draw people ’til the cows come home, but anything else, apart from cats, is hard. Here’s a sleeping fox, drawn from an Internet photo. Thank goodness for the Internet, otherwise I’d have to go down the local museum to find a stuffed one to draw. I saved the drawing at different stages to make a slide show of its progression.

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Luckily you don’t have to stuff a cat to draw them. They act like they’re stuffed about 22 hours a day. 😀

Foxy

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Husb and I were visiting family this evening, very dark and wet, when we saw something in the headlights run across the road up ahead. A fox! Rather a beautiful one, sleek and well fed with a huge, fluffy, white-tipped brush. I’ve only seen an urban fox a handful of times in my entire life and just twice in Swansea. It was a real thrill. So I scribbled one. I’m getting to enjoy drawing wild animals now. I didn’t like it at first but now it’s interesting to work out the different anatomy and structure. The drawing was done from a photograph sourced from the Internet. I used my Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 with a free Markers app.

Slobbing With Raphael

1393191228703(1)I’m bone idle and slobbed out in front of the telly with the fab book on Raphael that Husb got me for Xmas. So my daily scribble is a study after a Raphael sketch drawn on my Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0. I’ve saved the drawing at different stages and made a slideshow so you can see how it’s developed from laying down a background (which needs to be done with this free Markers drawing app) to the finished sketch above. I don’t think it matters what I draw, just as long as I do something every day to keep my hand in. And now I’ve got an episode of the third series of Game Of Thrones with my name on it 😀

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Drawing In Darkness

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Husb and I went to Taliesin Arts Centre this evening to see a version of Dreyer’s 1932 silent film, Vampyr accompanied by live musicians. It was fantastic. I had a bash at drawing in the dark, using a complete set of sepia Faber Castell Pitt drawing pens in sizes S, F, M and B and drawing into my A5 clothbound sketchbook. It was a challenge to draw dark subject matter in the dark. I could hardly see what I was doing so I hastily sketched in the light bits when there was a bit of light from the cinema screen and spent most of the time making marks to fill in the dark areas with different size pens. The mark making was also influenced by the music and the film which is full of German Expressionist motifs.

 

 

Another Digital Nude

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We always finish with a long, one-hour, pose at Thursday night’s life drawing group at Swansea Print Workshop. I couldn’t be bothered to pack my drawing bag, if I’m honest, so I just took my Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 tablet and used the free Markers app. I’m learning more and more about the digital approach as time goes on. I started by laying down a background, overlaying several translucent colours with my finger – white, grey, beige and white again. Then I drew the figure and surroundings with the stylus, keeping my pallete restricted to sepia, olive, sanguine, grey and white with a splash of pink, varying the limited brushes to achieve different lines and pressures. I saved at several stages – never forget to save – I lost a few drawings in the early days – they just disappeared! The act of saving also gives you a little slideshow of the progression of the drawing too.

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