I am busy making a series of a hundred simple still life drawings of everyday objects from direct observation, in attempt to improve my eye. This is number 18.
Showing posts with label pencil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pencil. Show all posts
Saturday 19 May 2012
Sunday 13 May 2012
Tuesday 8 May 2012
Peach kernel and egg
What with a severe bout of flu and all manner of other things, I seldom have time to draw anything. Here's a quick one of a peach kernel and an egg, just to get me back into it.
Wednesday 18 January 2012
Self-portrait
New year; time for a new self-portrait. As with all my self-portraits, I look like a murderous psychopath. I'm not really that unfriendly.
Sunday 28 August 2011
Sunday 24 July 2011
Egg and glasses
I went along with friends to go see the last Harry Potter film, in 3D, some time ago. The film was okay; I disliked the 3D effect. It gave me a headache: everything seemed constantly slightly out of focus, and the colours and light dark and somehow not "there." But those 3D glasses, in combination with an egg, made for a somewhat surreal still life:
Monday 11 July 2011
Pear and pocket knife
Another attempt at something metallic, and again not entirely successful. HB mechanical pencil on printer paper; about size A5.
Thursday 7 July 2011
Tuesday 5 July 2011
Broken bottle
What is dangerous trash to everyone else, is priceless treasure to the artist. I found this piece of broken bottle on a sidewalk. I picked it up because it seemed like a rather dangerous thing to leave lying around on a surface where children walk, and because I liked the way the sun's light glinted on it and fell through it. How can one not want to draw such a marvelous thing?
Saturday 2 July 2011
Austin Roberts Bird Sanctuary
A nice place to kill a few hours is the Austin Roberts Bird Sanctuary in Pretoria, where a large enclosure is home to all manner of critters, such as this steenbok:
Little egret:
And the ubiquitous Egyptian goose:
Also commonly found at the reserve is the white-faced duck:
It is a congenial place to make sketches of birds, something I try now and then when I can work up the courage to try sketching moving targets.
As one might expect, there is also a large variety of birds, especially waterbirds, such as comb ducks (a.k.a. knob-billed ducks, for obvious reasons):
Blacksmith lapwing (so named because of its call, which resembles a small hammer hitting an anvil):
Also commonly found at the reserve is the white-faced duck:
and yellow-billed duck:
Sunday 26 June 2011
Saturday 25 June 2011
Glass, metal and plastic
An empty mustard jar and penny whistle. Couldn't quite capture the metallic look of the whistle's tube. lots of other problems I can see as well, now that the thing is done! But who knows, another few hundred such sketches and they might begin to look like something.
Thursday 23 June 2011
A still life or two
Let's see if Blogger will let me post pictures now. Two recent still life setups, neither really particularly successful:
Tuesday 21 June 2011
Apple and banana
I have been struggling to draw this particular cultivar of apple ("Royal Gala"- they are difficult to draw but absolutely delicious); all those intricate little patterns tend to confuse me. I always get hopelessly lost in detail, and after a while I cannot remember which particular little patch of red I am working on anymore. This one does look marginally better than some of my previous attempts, I think, so perhaps there is some progress. Anyway, one of the advantages of this sort of subject is that you get to eat your models after the drawing session, thus destroying all the evidence and ensuring that no one can come and claim that you got this or that little detail wrong.
Thursday 16 June 2011
Mug and light bulb
Battled a bit with this one, but I think I did learn the one and other. For example, if you want white objects to look like they are white in your drawing, put them against a dark background instead of on a sheet of white paper!
HB mechanical pencil; a bit smaller than A4.
HB mechanical pencil; a bit smaller than A4.
Friday 1 April 2011
Self-portrait
Finally had time for drawing again, even if only a rather quick and rough sketch. As always with self-portraits, I hasten to note that I don't normally look that angry. It's just an effect of staring intently into a mirror!
About A4 size, pencil on printer paper (which is less than ideal for drawing, but has the advantage of being cheap.)
About A4 size, pencil on printer paper (which is less than ideal for drawing, but has the advantage of being cheap.)
Friday 7 January 2011
Scavenger hunt
I recently went through one of my periodic artistic crises: I simply couldn't draw anymore. I seemed to have regressed to the point where I was ten years ago. It was partly perhaps simply that I had been busy and had not really drawn anything for several months. But I began to realize what the problem was: I had become lazy and instead of setting up simple still life arrangements or taking a sketchbook outside to draw from life, I had begun to rely on reference photos.
Some people can make beautiful art from reference photos. I can't. Whenever I try, the result is always the same: everything is out of proportion and flat and uninteresting, and looks less real than a stick figure. I learn this lesson about once every year, and then I forget it again. So here I once again promise myself to never draw from reference photos again. Not that I ever have time for more than rather rough sketches anyway.
As part of this New Years' resolution (and I thought I never make such resolutions!), I participated in a game on WetCanvas called "Scavenger hunt," in which one tries to draw one or more items from a somewhat random list, with basically the only rule being that they have to be drawn from direct observation, rather than from photos or memory.
So here's my scavenger hunt drawing, perhaps the first of many, of a yellow cling peach and a glass tot measure:
As often with my amateurish drawings, it is in common old HB pencil on equally common and cheap old printer paper, 18cm x 12cm.
Some people can make beautiful art from reference photos. I can't. Whenever I try, the result is always the same: everything is out of proportion and flat and uninteresting, and looks less real than a stick figure. I learn this lesson about once every year, and then I forget it again. So here I once again promise myself to never draw from reference photos again. Not that I ever have time for more than rather rough sketches anyway.
As part of this New Years' resolution (and I thought I never make such resolutions!), I participated in a game on WetCanvas called "Scavenger hunt," in which one tries to draw one or more items from a somewhat random list, with basically the only rule being that they have to be drawn from direct observation, rather than from photos or memory.
So here's my scavenger hunt drawing, perhaps the first of many, of a yellow cling peach and a glass tot measure:
As often with my amateurish drawings, it is in common old HB pencil on equally common and cheap old printer paper, 18cm x 12cm.
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