It’s been a long time…

.. been a long time,
Been a long lonely, lonely,
lonely, lonely, lonely time.
Rock & Roll, Led Zeppelin

Vacations seem to unsettle me. Now, dont get me wrong I love them like everyone else. The problem is that well before they start and for a long while after I cant get started on painting.  I’m on my way to starting again and the next vacation is a few weeks away. Have to find a way to tackle this. If you have any ideas please leave me a comment. I’m willing to try most things but not stop holidaying!

8″ X 10″ Pen & Ink and white chalk in my sketchbook.

Nothing comes from nothing…

Nothing ever could…. or so I firmly believed. Actually, that is a bit of an exaggeration. I felt that I needed to learn a lot more before I could just sit in front of a blank canvas and start to paint.

I was given two challenges by my friend Sangeeta during my recent visit. One was to make an abstract piece and the second was to paint something without a reference. This started out as my attempt at making an abstract piece and then before I knew it it had turned into a face or at least what I thought resembled a face

Acrylic on canvas. Made the background first with a largish bristle brush and the face with a palette knife. Roughly 18″ X 12″.

Update: Aug 1, 2007 : Decided to get adventurous while framing my first painting. Lesson learned – tried and tested ways may be better I need to find a way to subdue the colour of the inner frame either with a rough coat of paint or with a mat insert. What do you think?

Fake Dane’s Portrait

Read about Fake Dane’s request to Jana to make his portrait on the Every Day Matters Yahoo Group and off I went to Jana’s to check it out. She’d mentioned that there was an invite to join in. It looked tough and I thought that I’d give it a miss. But the thing about digests is that when the next person jumps on board you get to read about it again and then the next. I went and checked out the photo references on his blog. This time I decided to give it a go. Here’s my version. I’m writing asking for one in return and I hope he will oblige. Shall update this post when I hear from him.

Update: Mar 28, 2007 : I heard from Fake Dane earlier today and he liked my version too. Here’s the link to the post on his blog. He dabbles in photography, film and not drawing as so has decided to give making mine a miss He’s looking out for more so if you’re interested download one of his photo references from the links above and give it a go.

Quite a few people have asked me about these “digital scratchboards”.   I’ve put down my process below. I have to admit that I haven’t used a scratchboard IRL as I haven’t located one in the art shops here.

1. I’ve used Art Rage 2 to make this and the earlier digital scratchboards.

2. The first step was to create a template for the background. I used the roller tool set at 34%.   Black paint was applied with horizontal strokes overlapping slightly followed by similar vertical strokes.  This is the process I follow for applying gesso on canvas.

3. With this one I made a slight variation. After saving a copy with a new name I added another layer and made a rough sketch with a red marker tool.  This stood out very well against the black background and also would not interfere with the white lines I was going to erase.

4. I then went back to the original layer and used the eraser tool at 1% width to erase using the red lines as reference.

5. mistakes were filled in with the roller tool set at 1%.  the only problem was that it looked darker than the shade made with the larger roller tool.

6. for the background the eraser tool was changed to 8%.  In retrospect i think I would’ve liked the lines to be spaced out more.

Few thoughts for the next attempt.

to check out some scratchboard samples on the web to see how shading negatively is handled.

to draw out a value scale of 3 or 5 prior to starting the drawing.  this area could certainly take a lot of improving

to add another layer for making the background.

If you have any other suggestions or advice please do leave me a comment.

Digitally Done

Project Andrew Wyeth continues….  I just cannot seem to resist drawing Andew Wyeth from his photographs.  He has so many interesting lines on his face most of which i could not capture and so this is going to stay WIP until I learn a bit more on tackling lines and wrinkles.   The first one was made a couple of days back.

Made digitally with oils in Art Rage 2 .

Upside down

I did my first upside down drawing following instructions in Betty Edwards book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. It was a line drawing by Picasso named Portrait of Igor Stravinsky. I liked what it looked like and that encouraged me to proceed with the other exercises and my drawing and confidence improved. We moved cities whilst I was in the midst of working on these exercises. This was in mid 2004. We eventually settled down in an apartment of our own some 10 months later and by then I’d moved on.

After viewing two fellow EDMers’ (Penny Hackett-Evans and Joyce of Draw Daily ) posts where they had displayed their portraits attempts in Danny Gregory’s style, I knew right away that I was going to be joining them. Both mentioned his recent post with a demo video showing him making a portrait. In it you can see him draw a portrait with a Koh-in-noor Rapidograph and then fill it in with a wash of Sumi Ink all the while keeping his sketchbook upside down. It was very exciting and inspiring watching him draw. After which I immediately set off to make mine. This is my attempt.

Andrew Wyeth is the chosen Master for the months of Mar/April in project over at WetCanvas!. I had been downloading images of him and his work last night. I grabbed one of his photos turned it to black & white, increased the contrast and rotated it till it was upside down. Turned my sketchbook upside down too and started drawing with my 0.7 Rotring Isograph. I think a 0.3 was recommended but I dont have one. The drawing was like a semi-blind contour as that is what i’d spent a good half an hour doing, last night. I finally broke open a large sealed bottle of Chinese Ink bought in 2000! Seems to be working fine though it pongs quite a bit. I find that the portrait is much narrower than the reference I used and doesnt look like Andrew Wyeth but I still liked it and so did my husband and so here it is! I’m now planning to make the same portrait right side up

8″X10″ Pen & Ink wash in my sketchbook

Reference used for the above drawing – Photograph copyright Jim Graham

My first swap

A project that I am participating in involves exchanging paintings of portraits. Read more in A Portrait Swap.

Here’s a crop of the beautiful painting of me that’ll be here soon.

And below is the one I’ll be mailing out in a weeks time.  Finished it a short while back and now waiting for it to dry.  It’s 12″ X 12″ oil on canvas.

Black Box Invention – It eats money

After hearing what my husband had to say and few other comments that I received, I realised that I had not expressed my thoughts adequately in the painting above. Not that I am any better with words but I would like to give it a try.

Background: Eleven years of work experience followed by six years of unemployment. Most of these out of choice. I realised that I did not want to go back. Four of the last 6 years has been spent looking for the one thing that would provide enjoyment and a little income. When over 2 years ago I rediscovered my love of drawing I decided that this had potential. Draw, paint and sculpt. Put in a couple of years and see if there was a possibility of earning some money. At least enough to cover the art supplies and book expenses.

It’s been well over two years now and of late this thought has been on my mind. Yesterday I saw it come out as a painting. The painting above started as an illustration for this weeks topic “invention” on Illustration Friday. Normally the drawings made for these challenges are single objects or standalones. Yesterday, I proceeded along the same lines with an idea of a box but I got lost in its making and it took a life of its own. I felt I had more to say and just the box on it own was not enough.

Invention: The black box eats a lot of money and occasionally spits out a painting. Some good, found hanging on my walls, and some bad on the floor. All still with me! And then there is me standing on the right with weighing scales in my hand to show that if I look back on the past two years, a lot of money has gone in for the few pieces that were made.

Wouldnt it be fantastic if the box could take my paintings and spit out some money? More and more, I want this interest of mine to support itself. I will take notice and consider steps to bring the scale to a more balanced level. And if the attempt is unsuccessful, I will look at part time and other options. Notice that there is no talk of giving up on painting

Here are a few sites that I’ll be looking to try – CafePress / Zazzle / Art.com. Etsy and ebay are not amongst these as I’m unsure of the effectiveness of the postal system here.

This piece is digital and has been made with Art Rage 2. Like the “Man with the Pipe“, I would like to make this in acrylic too.

A bird

There are just one or two small and very rough sketches of crows in my collection. I seem to have stayed far away from drawing birds and animals with the exception of cows. This one is not from life. It was from a reference found in an article on beating bird flu! There were 4 steps to turning the reference into a finished drawing for a post relating a story of the results of my search on how the turkey got its name for the Illustration Friday topic for this week – Thanksgiving.   One other advantage of using the digital medium is the ability to carry out various action on the object.  Here the bird was flipped over to the other side as I wanted to place the speech bubble to the right.

Made with Art Rage 2 from a photo reference.

Toothy Smile

One more for the November Challenges thread at the Painters Alley, WetCanvas. This is one of the subforums under Digital Art and is for images painted using the techniques of a traditional painter without filters, effects, cloning, paint overs, or plugins. Images using those methods are posted in the regular digital art forum.

Made with Art Rage 2 from a selection of photo references provided by the moderator.

Man with a cap

I’m having a problem with the portrait that I’m painting for a Portrait Swap. Went to WetCanvas! to look around and found the November Challenges thread in Painters Alley (digital forum). Here’s my attempt at drawing one of the references provided – the Man with a Cap.

There is a problem with likeness and I seem to make everybody without exception look much older than they are!! I know now that harsh and dark lines are the main reason and I’m trying to keep that in mind while drawing. I’m also trying to be concious of the the 3Dness of the subject so that makes one more addition to my list – practice shading to give an object form.

Digital.  Made with Corel Painter IX.5.  I’ve used various shades of Conte crayons.