Final Owl for Anna

Wow, I can hardly believe it has been 2 months since I've posted anything. I've not heard any howls of protest at my lack of posting, so I'm not in trouble I suppose! :-)

Recall my rejected barn owl by Anna; I decided to do a more whimsical piece for her; it is an owl practicing ballet. I gave it to her this week and she said that she liked it, so that means it is a huge success.

I have promised myself to be more diligent ( i.e at least one per day) in doing some sketching/painting during the summer.

Here is the dancing owl:

PS: I was smart enough to do a quick preliminary sketch to show her before I started the final; she said it was OK but I needed to put more jewels on the tiara! 

Anna and the Owl

Recall from a previous post that I gave a "practice" rabbit I painted to Adrian when he asked if he could have it. I didn't want to leave Anna out and asked what she would like: "...an owl". [ at this point is where I went off the rails...]

I decided to do a simple barn owl; did one and didn't like it so I did another. I've posted photos of the painting at various stages. Then when she was over today, I asked her which one she liked best and would want me to put into the frame I had.

She furrowed her brow and stuck out her arms with each hand made into a fist. I had to get Adrian to translate: "she means none of them". I asked her what she didn't like about the painting "..I don't want so much white, I want brown".

I then did what I should have done at the start: we sat with a bird book to look at the section on owls, and it turns out she would like a great horned owl.

I respect Anna for sticking to her guns and wish I had been sensitive enough to ask her at the start what she wanted.

So, it is literally back to the drawing board - stay tuned for Owl #3!

 Above is the initial pencil sketch [darkened so I can trace onto watercolour paper].

I apologize for the shadows on these, but rather than putting damp paper into the scanner, I stood and photographed these; shadow is from my desk lamp.

Last Painting Class in Canmore

Today was my last class in Canmore; each time I learn something and also learn how much more I need to learn!

Here are the results from last 4 classes ( 2 classes per painting).

At the end of each class we all put up our paintings on a wall and stand back...if you stand far enough back they don't look too bad. Unfortunately, scanning them is like putting your eyeball on the painting... so give me a break and stand up and back away from your monitor...trust me - they will look better!

Now I need to find an owl to paint for Anna to go along with the rabbit for Adrian.

Accidental "art"?

I have been trying to put in as much time as I can on exercises,etc recognizing that I'm not going to get any better by reading about painting!

On of the exercises I did was a rabbit in a field using "non traditional" colours; most(all) are just that, exercises. However the other day Adrian was over and we were in my office looking at some lego stuff and he saw the rabbit. He said it was good and could he have it?

I was going to re-do it - since it was a quick exercise there are many areas for improvement; but Robin pointed out that it was this one that he liked.

Now I need to plan to do something similar for Anna... perhaps an owl?

Art Class _ Painting #2, final stage

Here is the final painting of the house; recall 'stage 1' was posted previously.

The learning continues, the curve looks steep at times!

Art class

I  got to class this week and had to catch up a bit; below is the 'work in progress' from 3 weeks ago, I will finish it this week and then post the finished painting for comparison...and add the finished painting from this week's class.

One thing I have gotten so far from this class is an appreciation of the subtleties of the medium ( and the frustrating uncertainties as it interacts with water); I see that in the past I have been using it more or less like a crayon!...so that should mean that I can't get any worse!

Painting with grandkids

Both Adrian and Anna enjoying drawing and painting with me. However, Anna has really taken to watercolours and insists on painting at "grampa's painting desk".

 This one above is a "spotted elephant"; coloured after she drew it in pencil. She insisted that this elephant has a short trunk ( head on RH side) and didn't want to make it longer.

This was her first water colour using "real paper" and Grampa's paints; she just wanted to see what she could do.

These are from a joint session with both Anna and Adrian. Top left is Anna's 2 laughing giraffes, bottom right is Anna's "storm clouds", and she added, that the purple looks like sunset!

Top right is Adrian's: there is a red giraffe kicking out at a shark (in grey); there is also a red hazelnut tree; bottom left is one that Adrian did for Nora.

Drawing and painting with the kids, who are so uninhibited reminds me of a story from the book "drawing on the right side of the brain" by Betty Edwards. Her 4 year old niece asked her what she taught; Betty responded that she taught art to adults. There was a long pause and the little girl said "..why, did they forget how?".

Sketching People - "homework"

I mentioned that I am taking the video course offered by Marc Holmes on craftsy.com called "sketching people ".
This is supposed to be sketching people who are moving or at least not posing.... I cheated and sketched myself staring into the computer monitor! These are meant to be more impressionistic than "realistic"...good thing!

I will park myself in a coffee shop and try to do what the course is training me to do: sketch moving ( i.e not posing) people.

The canada goose is what I painted at my first session of watercolour class.... there is some room for improvement!

Elephant Sketches

As I mentioned in my last post, I will be filling up a small format sketch book I have from "PooPooPaper". The paper is made from elephant poop - apparently they are very inefficient in processing what they eat, so there is a LOT of vegetable matter in their waste. They have paper made from other animals, including Moose. Their website is www.poopoopaper.com

I find the paper difficult to work with using watercolour; it is heavy but doesn't behave like normal watercolour; the water is absorbed very quickly so you have little time to add your paints.

Here are my first 3 sketches.

Book for Anna

I am almost finished this; I was advised to waterproof it ( it is water colours) and unfortunately, that has caused some of the colours to run,etc.

I am also not happy with the painting, but next one will be better.

The book is bound using the coptic binding technique so that the book will more or less lay flat. However, because of the small size and thick paper, it is a struggle. It will work better with a larger format.

Here are scans of the book pages. The finished size is 2 X 3 inches

Much too long!

It has been far too long since I put anything up here.... still struggling with "drawing block". Aside from random sketching in my sketch books, the only thing of note was a "smurf battle robot" i drew for my grandson, Adrian. He and I have been having these long involved "smurf" battles. These are "mind" battles mostly as I come up with a 'weapon" and he instantly devises a counter measure. This robot was inspired by these sessions, and I've incorporated some of the better ones in a single Master Robot: the 'flaming weasel gun', the hose 'what shoots sticky juice", giant drill bit, automatic claw arm, laser beam... there are many more but no room on the robot!.

I did them each a Christmas card, which I forgot to scan, but will try to retrieve and put up here.

I will resolve to do draw more!... now that I have my second-hand Stadler drawing table, I have less excuses.

ArtRage

I am still promising to get more drawing done and I will. I"ve got some almost ready to post that are going to be part of my series of inspirations from the grandkids. In the meantime, I've been trying to get more comfortable with digital drawing using ArtRage; this program mimics drawing/painting with water colour, oil, pastel, pencil, ink,etc...with an infinite set of variations. I drew some polar bear sketches in pencil in my sketch book. I  then decided to try same drawing in ArtRage; this is one of the least bad ones!... I have a way to go before I feel competent with that software.

Grandchildren

I'm not doing well on my promise to draw and post more!.... but I will.

I'm trying to do some drawings based on inspiration from Adrian or Anna. I have a couple in the works; here is a quick one I did of some Aspen leaves that Anna picked for me when we were walking outside earlier this week.

[ drawn with Noodler's rollerpen and watercolour]

More sketch book pages

I decided to add some pages from my sketchbook that I did when I was out working on Tatoosh; the reference to E-dock is the dock where Tatoosh is moored in Sidney B. C. As you can see, I've discovered that some of the ink I have is NOT waterproof and does not dry quickly, hence the smudges/smears on some of the pages.

Older sketches

I've been testing/trying/playing with Art Rage ( drawing program) and a few sketches in my sketch book but nothing I'm happy with sharing. So I've resorted to adding these two sketches from earlier this year that have been pinned up on my wall for no particular reason.

I've not done an ink drawing for a while and the drawing of storm clouds over downtown Calgary reminded me that I should try one soon.

The second is a small watercolour I did to tryout using a resist to leave white paper behind after doing some washes. Colours didn't come out from scanner ( I may have to adjust colour balance on my scanner) but for what it is worth, here it is.

I'm off to coast to work on the boat this week so maybe the change of scene will inspire some more drawing ( and limited access to internet to distract me also!)

another penguin

Yes, I know, it has been almost 2 weeks. I've been doing some drawing but not nearly what I had set out for myself. I have been experimenting with ArtRage ( digital painting program). It has so many features and options that I find I keep getting lost in trying out various types of media (ink/watercolour/paint,etc) and variations on settings,etc that I forget that the object is try to do a drawing! So, back to penguins and this is a result of me trying out some digital watercolours on ArtRage. Maybe for my next ArtRage experiment I'll have a few beers first to unleash the inner painter!