Dawnita....

01-31-2012. I'm still working my way through my friends that let me borrow them to practice. I liked this one... girl AND boy... eyelashes AND beard.   Score!  :-D

01-30-2012. Full Circle.

It was one year ago today that I started this experiment. Not sure I could do it, HATING sketching, but willing to give it a shot...nothing ventured nothing gained, right?  So I thought that it was fitting to go back to the beginning. So, I wandered down to the little coffee shop with my sketch pad, a pencil and two markers in my pocket, and enough cash for a turkey wrap and a hot tea.

On and off throughout the whole experience I've sketched people in the coffeeshop, on the train, occasionally at home (thaaanks, mom!), and, when the weather was bad or cold, I'd steal photos from my friends (with their permission, of course).

And so there I was, at the coffeeshop. I spotted my quarry, a gent working diligently on his laptop, and grabbed my pencil. A few quick lines to make sure he stayed in proportion (relatively) and here's what I realized that I've learned. And it's taken me a year....

CONFIDENCE. Be confident, let yourself go, and it will come to you. And some days it won't. I am more confident now in my lines, in myself being able to lay the lines down, and I am also confident that I know NOTHING. Which doesn't bother me any more. Before I wanted to learn. To be able to voice it with specifics. I wanted to be able to dissect, and disseminate. Now? Mmmmm. No. I just want to do.

This has become much more than a practice. This has become, to me, my meditation.


“Your own positive future begins in this moment. All you have is right now. Every goal is possible from here.” 
― Lao Tzu

Ssstephinoneline

01-29-2012. I found Sssteph's fun photo, with all that delicious pattern in it and remembered when I sketched Tom. How he'd challenged me to sketch him all in one line. And how I had to think ahead while thinking during to make the lines go where they wanted. And how I was happy that he was in profile. Well, this one pretty much SCREAMED sketchmeallinonelineandkeepthepatternsintherebutohyeahI'mfacingfullfrontmuahhahahahahaha!!!
But I did it anyway. The part that I'm a bit off about is the corner of her mouth when I took the line out to do her dimples. If I'd thought about it, I could have possibly brought it up from her chin in a swoop to leave out that slightly ungainly line across, but what's done is done, and I'm overall very happy with it and it was fun to do. :)

Zoom out...

01-28-2012. Today I was going to sketch a friend's son for her. Unfortunately, as I went through her photo albums, I wasn't able to find a large enough photo to be able to see his face clearly. What I did run across gave me an idea, though. And a welcome break for a day. I found a photo of him from more of a distance and decided to sketch more of his body as opposed to just a head. I didn't do nearly as bad as I thought I might. I still get nightmare images of mannequin-like stiffness from tying to sketch bodies...bodies that developed odd proportions...a lack of fluidity...*shudder* Anyhoo, This made me relatively happy. What I remembered AFTER I started sketching him is that further away = less facial features. Which made me a bit sad, since I love looking at faces. But I couldn't very well make his head bigger with sharp features. Poor guy would look like a bobble head. Hopefully, though, soon I can get a photo a bit larger of him to indulge in my need to sketch faces.  :)

Rusty...

01-27-2012. This is Rusty. Another friend from the past who I ran into again (yay, internets! I've found a lot of people I'd never ever thought of running into again once we left high school). I picked on Rusty today since I wanted to sketch a guy again. Bonus: Beard (love trying to sketch beards) Hat (these types of hats are the bane of my existence. The more practice the better.) and Cat (sketching FUR without sketching each INDIVIDUAL strand...). Also I wanted to try to be a bit conscious of and stay away from any need to be symmetrical when utilizing the thicker marker pen. I used to sketch things and be very aware, and think it was RIGHT (GASP!!!!) to draw everything symmetrical. Well, we know it ain't so. It makes everything appear fake and plastic and boooooooorrrriiiing.  :)

Judith

01-26-2012. Some days are harder than others. What do I mean? I dunno. In the direction that my invisible artist sitting in my brain seems to be going at the moment, I suppose that the closest I could get to what I mean is that some days the person I sketch just for some reason doesn't feel like it's taking on the page. The characteristics that I see don't seem to jibe with what winds up going onto the page. What I hope to eventually be able to do (and I'll swear to it...at least for today...) is to get loose, descriptive lines, AND have that person look back at me from the page. This period that I seem to be going through now is helping me work toward it, I suppose, since I'm becoming more familiar with sketching the human face, and the lines are a lot looser than before. Could they BE looser? Of course. Do I want them to be? I'm almost absolutely positive. Ever onward...

Now where was I?  Oh yes. Today. Well, today was an easier day. I hardly grimaced at all when my little inner artist inside my brain grabbed the marker pen and started at it. Time flew, not a lot of thought. I'd give it a thumb's up day. :-D

Stacey and Evaristo

01-25-2012. This one was interesting because on the left is Evaristo. In High School we all called him Junior. I knew Junior, who is a pretty cool cat, and he hasn't changed a lot. Maybe a few more lines, a bit shorter hair... but what made sketching him harder was the fact that his head was cocked at an angle. It makes it a bit harder to eyeball and get the proportions somewhat on (if that's what you're looking for). So I had THAT bit of messing with my mind. Now, on the other hand (and side of the paper) is his wife, Stacey. I'd never met Stacey before Evaristo brought her to our class reunion (I won't say which one, I wouldn't want to embarrass him...) *grin* but I'm glad he did, because she's become a pretty good over the 'net friend. BUT... I met her once. So I'm not familiar with her at all in a three dimensional capacity. While she was unfamiliar, she was easier because her head was pretty vertical. Like I said. Good practice. Good peeps. :)

Reverend Bunnie

01-24-2012. One of my more interesting friends that I have met via my art groups that I hang out in on the internet is Toni. Aside from being a very nice person, she is a chameleon with her looks, being able to change from an Audrey Hepburn look to well... she's done a lot of very cool (for lack of a better word... forgive me, it's almost midnight and I feel the bed calling my name) photography self portraits. If she wrote an autobiography, I'm pretty sure it'd be on a best seller list somewhere... This is her in her natural state (mayyyyybeee...) ;-)

Emma

01-23-2012.  It's interesting (she ponders) how when you haven't seen someone for a decade or two, and you borrow them to sketch... how that old image of them keeps popping into your head and messes with your perception of them as they ARE. And it makes you look at the sketch as if you did it all wrong, when in fact all they did was GROW UP. This didn't happen so much for Emma, who looks pretty much exactly like she did in high school, but it was one of those thoughts that passed through my mind. So I thought I'd share. I have sketched some friends where the jump is big, and I keep looking at it in dissatisfaction... when everything is perfectly fine. Hm.... Guess you just have to let go and stop thinking....

Anne and Pearl...

01-22-2012. There are two reasons why I took an older, different approach to sketching out Anne and Pearl the Pup today. Anne let me zoom through her photos to play, and there were several cool ones...alas, they were a bit small. I'd be squinting a lot to try to figure out the lines.  So I found this one, which was larger, but a bit on the shadowy side. Which is fine (lovely actually. One of my favorite painters is Caravaggio!) Looking at Pearl's wonderfully curly furry fluffiness, I decided that sketching this way would suit her (them) better.. it does great for shadows, and makes her look nice and fuzzy...  :)

More Time Today...

01-21-2012. Today I stayed inside. It was a wee bit cold and hey, why go out if you don't have to when it's 20 degrees out? This is Amy again...along with her brother and Mom. Unfortunately, when I switched the sketchpad around to get everyone in there, I ran up against the spiral binding. I'm not crying foul, by any means... It was just an introduction to something new that I hadn't dealt with before. And so poor Amy suffered. Sketching in pen doesn't allow for covering over whoopsies, and bracing my hand to sketch the side of her face over there...well...it didn't work very well. So while there aren't specific areas that I can point out that make her feel off, there are a bunch of small ones that compound to tweak the shape of her face enough that it doesn't work as well as the last time I sketched her. :-/  Ah well, we live, we learn, we draw.

Judy...

01-20-2012. This is Judy. Judy has GREAT hair. Which is what I was playing with today... trying to show the curls without going overboard with the lines and making them too stiff. It's HAIR. It's gotta look loose and flowy and curly and bouncy. So I tried to loosen it up on it, and simplify with basic shapes and loose scribbles. It's halfway there, I think... I could have gotten rid of some of them...but then how to show the curls?  Hmmm... something to ponder....

Carmen

01-20-2012. This is Carmen. Carmen has a great mouth to draw. It was fun. Lots of mouths can be a bit boring, and usually the eyes are the things that I love sketching first and foremost. But it seems like it has really evened out nowadays. And today. Yup. The mouth had is.  I borrowed one of her photos to sketch, and the hari on the right side of her head was a bit dark. I made the executive decision that a darker circular thing was not a curl, but indeed an earring. It gave her a bit of a gypsylike appearance. :-D

Katie and her hat.

01-18-2012. As everyone knows who has read this blog, I have an affinity for hats. Well, silly hats. Katie has a silly cookie monster hat that I really like. She also has a great smile to practice on, since she has braces (well, I'm not sure if she still does...) but the braces, the hat, and the glasses gave me an excellent chance to practice on a few things that I've never done before. And try to do them loosely. And the glasses... well, glasses are another animal. I may have drawn them a bit tightly, but there's that little person that sits on my shoulder that still wants the frames to be symmetrical. I know, I know. I'm trying to beat that little Cyndi into submission. Baby steps...

Wyatt

01-17-2012. Michie let me borrow her grandson, Wyatt, to practice on. I wanted to try another youngster. I was able to restrain myself from adding adding adding this time *whew*. And that kid's got a gorgeous head of hair.  :-O

:-D

Christy

01-16-2012. Christy posed a few challenges to me. One, she's facing forward...like I mentioned before in another post, head on is not a very desirable pose for me, since it seems to feel a bit static. Two, like the baby yesterday, this woman has NO wrinkles. I was afraid she'd wind up looking fake and plastic. And three, she's almost totally symmetrical. The tells of asymmetry are very slight in her facial features.  I was expecting this sketch to crash and burn. I was, however, surprisingly pleased by the result. With her hair and those minute differences she turned out well, I think. And the pose actually works well. It's good, I think, to make sure that when you sketch a face you make sure to keep doing it from different angles... experience is good.  :)

BABIES....arrrrgh....

01-15-2012. This beautiful little baby belongs to my friend Melinda. The reason for the melodrama up there^^ is that I almost did it again. I've had several conversations with fellow art type people about drawing. One of the ...well, not rules... but one of the things you HAVE to remember is that when you're drawing a baby, LEAVE OFF THE EXCESS SHADING AND LINES. Babies are smooth. I know, because every. Time. I'd try to sketch a baby... yeah... I'd over do it and suddenly they're looking like really odd 50 year olds. *sigh* As you can see, I started adding in shading and had to slap my hand because I almost did it again. Too much black, too much dark. I think I'ma have to come back and do some more babies.

A thought... possibly because they're so smooth and wrinkle-less etc. it FEELS like I need to add something else?

Anyhoo, as an aside, another thought popped into my head the other night. And that was that I'm happy that I started doing this sketching trip. For a while there, using a grid as a support to sketch out portraits I started losing any confidence in my ability to freehand people (and things) in a recognizable manner. This has given me back that confidence that I can do it, I just need to keep practicing.

So.. Yay. :)

Dave and crew

01-14-2012. This one took a bit more planning. Dave (a fellow artist...and a darned good one...) and his kiddos goofing around. I wondered about bringing in more shading, and whether or not lots of lines would make it muddled... but when the thicker pen was brought out, I'm pretty sure that that took care of that issue. :-)

Mika take 2

01-13-2012. This one feels much better. More fun, less static. When you see a face straight on, it tends (to me, anyway) to lose (caution: overused word coming up) dynamic. :)

A new challenge from Tom...

01-12-2012. My friend Tom let me sketch him, but he threw me a challenge. He told me which photo and he said "One line. Don't pick up the pen." So...one line. Don't pick up the pen. That one was kinda hard.... I guess it could have been harder though, with a full on look at his face.... two eyes, separated, etc etc....

Annie

01-11-2012. I borrowed my friend Annie for today's practice.  I gave her her brown eyes, but wanted to leave the hair simple, so I left out any attempt at adding in her red, vibrant hair.  :)

Cameras

01-10-2011. Cameras really skew images. I purposefully took a photo where I'd taken a photo from close up  and sketched it. When you look at the photo it's a bit harder to notice if you're not paying attention, but when you look at it drawn...WOW. My head looks HUGE. Well, a lot bigger than the photo looked.  I used my thumb and pencil to double check the width and height, and that's pretty much on... anyhoo, it was fun, even though it looks weird. ;-)

G...

01-09-2012. Yesterday it was pointed out by one of my respected peers that my sketch of Lisa looked like I'd substituted a basketball for her head to sketch. Sounds harsh, but not really. This is how we learn. Today I was having some difficulty with my friend Matt here (who as it happens is a great writer). I actually used a pencil to put in the general shape of the head, but then found myself refining the shape a bit with the pencil, too. I wound up sketching him out in ink after I'd resized his head (and coat) to a better size... hopefully this time less ball-shaped. What happened? Dunno. Could it be that in jumping size in the paper and giving myself MORE room it made it harder? Hm. Ah well, this is why we practice.  ;-)

I changed up a bit again, too, by minimizing the lines for his nose. And the lines denoting color in his eyes. Aside from my friend Amy's eyes (several sketches ago) Matt has the brightest light blue eyes you've ever seen... I didn't in any way want to muddy them up.

Lisa...

01-08-2012. I tried sketching Lisa a few days ago, but I think that I didn't give the amount of sketch time that I should have to her, and spent more on her pup. So I decided to give it another go. There's something about her that I couldn't quite put my finger on that makes her a bit hard to sketch. Which is cool, because it makes me want to try again... Hmmm....

Grandbaby...

01-07-2012. I liked this one. I liked the fact that I had two different facial types to work with. I liked the fact that I was sketching in my big sketchbook. With my new pens. Hey, what's not to like!?!  :-D

kitteh

01-06-2012. Tonight I still wanted to practice, but I wanted something other than human. So I used my faithful companion for a bit of practice with fur...and that cute, freckled nose. Cat's noses are so weird. :)

New pens...

01-05-2012... I love and hate when my comfy old pens die. I get so used to them making a certain type of mark, a certain depth, holding them a certain way... then suddenly, WHAM! It's dead. I've got to get out a new one. It's dark. I've got to hold it a bit different to get different lines... I don't WANT it that dark!! Whine whine whine, the list goes on. But I do love seeing a deep slashing black line. I don't even want to be more careful, because I wonder how the line will turn out...

Chloe

01-04-2012. Chloe is the daughter of one of my friends in my art groups. She's a delightful little bundle of energy, and she's really a great character to sketch. Personality just pours off her...and she's just so darned cute. Here she got her mom to get her a treat out at Christkindlmarket (yup, I probably spelled it wrong)...
:)

Lisa and Bronte

01-03-2012.Officially finished sketching at 11:45 p.m. I got a bit carried away with figuring out Bronte... since well, I'm not used to sketching fur. But it was fun. Bronte, By the way, is Lisa's bestest friend. :-D

Ceej

01-02-2012. Yes, I typed 2011 and had to backspace. Let's see how long THAT takes to stop. Anyhoo, this is my friend C.J., lovingly referred to by me as Ceej. A wonderful artist, I think I have as much admiration for her love of dressing up in costumes.... :)

Christie...

01-01-2012. This is Christie and her little man. She's very pretty, with not many lines to her face, sort of like her son at his young age. Which begs the question... where do I draw, and what do I draw, since if I leave it smooth and blank, she might LOOK smooth and blank. Hmmm... this is where I like that thin marker-pen. heavy lines would denote a heavier shadow which just isn't there. So instead the thin, spindly marker leaves us with the idea that there is a shadow there, but not a deeper crease. woo! Score!) :)

Happy New Year!!!

(12-31-2011.  Yep, I'm posting this in the wee hours of the morning, on Jan.1, 2012. I DID sketch it though, at about 10:30ish last night...12-31. Not a whole lot, but I tried. It's kind of hard when you're drawing in a bar, on a napkin, and no one will hold the least bit still for you. Oh, and did I mention the purple lighting? ) ;-)