Updates?...where are they??

Just a quick note to explain that I've missed my last 2 art classes due to Robin being ill and our furnace blowing up. I will post my latest from art class in a day or so - we are tied up with looking after grand-kids, which takes priority!

I had the pleasure of painting with Anna today; how refreshing to be with a 3 year old with no per-conceptions of what she should be doing. She now enjoys water colour and wants to paint "at grampa's paint desk". I'll scan her latest also..tomorrow.

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.

2015 - this will get better!

I am determined to follow the obvious advice and draw/paint more to get better; silence my inner critic and just do more drawing.

To that end I'm now taking a watercolour painting class in Canmore once a week; I'll post my 'classwork'. I've also been inspired by a book by Marc Holmes on urban sketching. I'm also taking  his online video class on sketching people. So, hopefully I can get past my previous drawing 'block' and just "do it"!

Finally, I found a small sketch book I bought in Sidney BC some time ago and forgot I had it. The paper is made from elephant poop, and I told myself I'd fill the book with elephant sketches...so more to come on that front also.

I've attached here one of the last things I drew in 2014, I made these drawings on puzzle kits to put in Anna and Adrian's stockings.

West coast

Started a doodle that turned into this speculative drawing: how would west coast First Nation draw an elephant?

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

Back after long time

I have challenged myself to do more blogging of drawing which, I hope, will force me to do more drawing!..... I'm still struggling with 'drawing block'. However, I am just finishing up a project for my granddaughter Anna. She loves books, loves small books, and loves owls. I've tried to combine all of that into a book I've written for her and illustrated, it is called "Hanna Looks for Books". Of course, Hanna is an owl.

Stay tuned; once I have bound it, I will post the results such as they are.

In the meantime, here is a drawing that Anna did of me; she whipped this off in about 15 seconds; she does have great hand-eye coordination; she routinely draws a circle very quickly and comes back to her starting point with minimum overlap.

She was careful to point out my eyes, moustache and smile.


Many art instruction books try to get adults back to being a child , who are not self-conscious or self-critical and draw spontaneously. One author recalled explaining to a 4 year old that her job was an art teacher at school, and the 4 year old said "You mean they forget how?"

I will take inspiration from Anna....

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.

I have Idea-- #3

This quick cartoon was inspired by a chat I had with Adrian when we were getting into the car to return to his house after a day at Grammy and Grampa's. This was the day we had built the T-rex snowman and he told me as we got in the car that we were both T-rex's sitting in the car. I said it would be difficult for a T-rex to sit in a car because of its tail. This is not a problem for a 3 year old imagination that hasn't been tainted by practicality: he replied without missing a beat: Grampa you need to have an automatic detachable tail like I have" !...and so do the guys in the cartoon.

I have idea

This doodle was a result of another conversation with Adrian: he has been fascinated with animals "bashing horns" and one day told me that if an animal had a club instead of horns, he'd win all of the bashing fights. this is what I think this guy would look like.

More sketches

Some mosques and minarets;

Some sketches from Saudi, week #4..finally?

I am trying to learn to use watercolours and am obviously still struggling; these were some pears that I'd bought and I used some new water-colour from tubes (bought here) rather than my 'travel kit' of water colour cakes in pan ( similar to what you had a child). The colours and depth of the tube paints are heads above the pan-type.
I also used the sketch book I got from Mike at Christmas; the paper is almost like what money is printed on, heavy weight but not as absorbent as full-blown water colour paper.

Coming Soon!

Now that I have agreed to another 6 month contract in Saudi, starting as soon as I get my visa (I'm booked to fly out of Calgary on Dec 22), I will not be able to use lack of time as reason to not be drawing.
We had our christmas gifts and family dinner yesterday; it was great that everyone could shuffle their schedules to be here. I received some wonderful journals from Mike; he added to my supply of moleskin-like journals (made in India, NOT China) called "hand-book journal co" , a Pentalic pad of very smooth, heavy weight paper for ink work, plus a marvelous hand made, leather bound water colour paper journal ( called "vincent Rossini")  and some neat Windsor & Newton inks. The leather journal is so nicely done, that I am nervous about making my first marks in it!  I only hope I can do it justice. It feels great to hold, so I expect it will spur me on to do great ( or at least better) things. Seeing it in the flesh has also inspired me to take up making my own journals using recycled leather for cover,etc.... this will be yet another project on my list when I get back to Calgary.

Currently I plan on using the leather  journal for sketches I will make on weekends in Saudi when I try to get out for some fresh air... let's see what evolves in the coming weeks.

The "hand-book journal" has buff, heavy paper (weight is not given on the label)  that can take light washes, along with elastic closure and pouch in the back; they are great for taking on trips/hikes or wherever.

The ramblings will continue and so will the drawing. I will also re-activate my travel blog (bruce-travel@blogspot.com). Stay tuned.

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.

Drawing Block continues

Although I know intellectually that to overcome this drawing block  I just need to draw, I've still not tackled a stand-alone drawing/painting for some time. However, I am still trying to do something everyday in my sketchbooks. I've posted some pages from my sketch book to prove that I'm not completely out of the picture ( no pun intended). Most of these are from a moleskin-like sketch book made in India. I don't buy the moleskins since they are now manufactured in China. I'm not happy with the paper, it is a bit fuzzy which is not so good for fine nibbed fountain pens,etc. However, it does take a light wash so I can use light watercolour washes for colouring.
The book is called "hand-book", from Global Art Materials, Inc Kansas City. I got mine at Mona Lisa art supply in Calgary.

 Above is the sort of aimless doodling i'm proned to do in the evening or with a coffee/tea break.

 Above is the new building at SAIT in Calgary.

 This is a fishing shack at Placentia Bay, NFLD.

 The dying tree that is growing out of our deck.

 A tree doodle from my imagination.

An exercise in drawing the same subject but with different media.

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!

Pens

In one of my internet wanderings [ i keep finding myself arriving at websites that bear no relationship to where I started my surfing!] I came across Goulet Pens . This is a small business run by a pen-o-holic offering a wide range of fountain pens and a myriad of inks, along with reviews, comparisons,etc. The pen that caught my attention was a new series of pen from the USA ink company, Noodler's. Noodler's has a wide range of inks, some of which are a "polar' series that will keep on writing in arctic conditions. Goulet also offers ink samples so that you can try out inks before buying a whole bottle.

Back to my topic; Noodler's owner has a philosophy that we should not be using throw-away pens ( there are one time use fountain pens now on the market, as well of course as one-time use roller pens) and that they can be made well and cheaply in the USA. His pens ARE all made in USA, using a vegetable based resin ( it has a plastic feel but is not plastic) and they retail in the $20 range. He has designed them so that they are readily taken apart for cleaning and/or part replacement so they will last a life time.

The fountain pen shown is Noodler's flex pen; the nib is flexible and can produce a wide range of line widths. [ another aside: he is a Moby Dick fan and the clip on the pen is a whale shape and the pen is called the 'Ahab'.]

In the photo you can see the brush pen, roller pen and fountain pen. These are all available from Goulet and I recommend them. You can also get ink syringes from Goulet so that you can refill ink cartridges for other pens that you may have.

Now all I have to do is start drawing more with these!

Here is a quick example of the lines from the pens: