2016 Drawing Recap

We are reaching the end of the year when I decided to learn to draw and paint. This will likely be a many year journey for me, since it brings me such enjoyment and there is so much to learn!

At the beginning of 2016, I was basically afraid to draw lines on a piece of paper. I also remember feeling a little bad about using a drawing or sketch pad, since it felt like a waste of "good" paper that a "real" artist could use.  At the beginning, I used a lot of copy paper (on the back side of paper that was going to be recycled). I don't feel that way anymore. As I write this what popped in my head is that I believe in the democratization of art. Creating art is for anyone who wants to partake and you need any special skills to start. You need knowledge and you need to practice. Really, it's the same as learning to play the piano.

Now that it's the end of 2016, I have several, full sketchbooks and I'm ready to let them go. These days, I have no problem using a sketchbook, but I'm also trying to shed my house of as many objects as possible. The reason for this blog is to capture my journey, so I don't have to keep all of my output. Before these sketchbooks go into the recycling bin, I took pictures of some of the drawings that had significance to me. Many of these have appeared in this blog when I first created them.

For the first several months in 2016, I took several 30 day challenges through Creativebug. For the first one, the artist, Lisa Congdon, demonstrated several ways to draw a certain type of object like a tree, chair, fish, and so on, in an illustrative style. At first, I would only try to draw exactly what she had drawn. With no background in drawing, it was useful. It was primitive learning for me since I didn't get how she decided to add a few hatch marks or side edges to her drawings. One day, the topic was brooms. This is one of the first times I branched out and tried to draw a real object in front of me.

Here is another early example from a Creativebug drawing challenge. I forgot who the artist was. The top light bulb was from the example that was provided. The florescent bulb was drawn from looking at one.

Here is another example from the Creativebug drawing challenges, when I drew items that were in front of me.

This is one of my favorite drawings from 2016. It was also the result of a drawing prompt from a Creativebug drawing challenge. The artist put several pins in a bowl and drew that. It was too hard to try to copy using her set up, so I made my own. I love this drawing. It's one of my first drawings of an entire "scene".  It makes me smile whenever I look at this one. 

In March 2016, I started taking painting classes with Kat Corrigan. In one of the classes, she had us do an exercise that involved doing a value study of an apple using charcoal. It was the first time that I made the connection on how important value is in drawing and painting. I was so excited when I got home from class that I tried a value drawing of a bowl using pencil.

Animals, mostly cats, have been a frequent subject. Here is a very, very early attempt to try to draw my cats. I wanted to capture this, so I can compare it to where I am today and how I hope to continue to develop!

This is one of my favorite value studies of Ella. After a painting did not work, I decided to try a value study before attempting another painting. It's the first time that I tried this and it was also the first time I remember completely losing myself in the shapes and values of something that I was looking at, in this case a picture. I wasn't trying to draw a cat. I was trying to capture what I really, really saw. When I was done, I looked at the finished drawing as a whole and was shocked that it really, really looked a lot like the original picture.

Here's a similar value study of a dog. This is actually value study #2.

For painting, I still rely upon my trusty and faithful grid lines. For sketching, I am trying to branch out and not use them.  This is a drawing from November where I felt like I captured Ella when she was sleeping.

Here is today's drawing. After this long recap, I probably should have some blockbuster drawing to share as the last one of this post. I don't. This is a simple line drawing of Ella and Dorian from this morning. I really enjoy the different ways cats fold themselves up and fold themselves together. I think this drawing closes this post by showing that picking up a pen or pencil and just drawing has become a normal activity for me.

This Afternoon

I painted this from a picture of a friend's cat. At first, it did not work for me. After getting away from it, eating supper, and making a few minor corrections, it works better, especially for a first attempt.

Mixing and painting the different whites was fun and I like the brush strokes. For once, I was able to carry plenty of paint in my brush.

I did this painting while my niece was over. We both painted together. While it was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon and fun way to spend time with her, I have a harder time painting or drawing with other people around. It's something that I want to practice, since I don't want to be down in basement all alone whenever I want to create!

Something New

A friend and I got together to paint, this afternoon. I decided to paint something quite different. About five years ago, I met friends in Ames IA. We went to the Reiman Gardens, where I took a lot of pictures of fanciful creatures and some very beautiful plants. Here is my rendition of a gnome that was in the garden. He was huge!

We also played with water colors for about 10-15 minutes. I did a super-quick painting. Water colors are sure different from acrylics!

Sentimental Journey

As a child, I adored Santa Mouse. I always put out milk and cookies for Santa, but I also put out milk and cheese for Santa Mouse. Yesterday was a quiet day, since all of the celebrating with family was on Christmas Eve. I finally took some time to draw and paint.

Here is a drawing of Santa Mouse.

Here is the finished painting.

Normally, I don't want to paint cutesy things. It's not my style, but I will make certain execeptions and one of those is for Santa Mouse.

Still On A Cat Theme

Wingnut, a cat in-law, wiggles significantly less than my kitties. Here he is resting before the family Christmas Eve celebration, although I'm not sure that my drawing really captures him.

I'm hoping to take some time to paint today.

They Still Move Too Often

My first attempt did not get very far, but I finished it away. Cat 1, who was sleeping soundly when I started, moved, moved and moved, again.

Cat 2 cooperated much better.  While there was movement, it was not as significant. Plus, I am really enjoying it when I can catch one of them sleeping with what I'm starting to think of as "oragami paws".

One thing that I'm finding with the pencil is that I'm not really that patient about shading and filling the drawing in with pencil marks.

They Move Too Often

I have a new super power. If a cat is sleeping soundly and I start to sketch or draw the cat, the cat will move. Here are some drawings from last night where I got far enough that I have something to show.

Here is Dorian. She was curled up in an unusual and appealing way at the start. She re-positioned herself several times, which made it hard. Long before I had something cohesive, she did a major move. More time would have been good to finish this and get the proportions captured better. It was so frustrating that I even wrote "too much moving" on the drawing.

Here is Hammet. He woke up and walked away before I got very far.

Here is the my favorite drawing from last night of Ella. Her full name is Ella Phant, but she also could have been named Ella Gant (even though this is the wrong spelling). I'm pretty slow, so this one took the longest. She moved slightly, several times.

I am looking forward to my drawing class that starts in January. There is a lot to learn, but I feel like I'm learning to see lines and shapes better.

Second Attempt

My second try turned out better. While I'm not fond of my paint strokes or some of the choices that I made, I am much happier with the shape of the dog's face. I will revisit this one some time in the future.

For comparison, here is the first attempt from several days ago.

A Better Drawing

A better drawing of the dog that I painted earlier this week will, hopefully, lead to a better painting today or tomorrow.

Play!

Yesterday, I went to Wet Paint for the supplies I need for my January drawing class. The class is calling for an 18 inch by 24 inch pad of paper and and 18 inch by 24 inch pad of newsprint. This seems like a ridiculously large size, but I got what was on the list. In addition, I also purchased a palette to hold the water color paint that I purchased awhile back, along with a nice brush and water brush for water color.

I got home from work early, so it was time to play. First up, I played with mixing brown in acrylic paint. For both sets of brown, the same yellow, red, and white paint was used for mixing. In the first set, the blue was the greener shade of blue.

In this set, I used the blue that has a red shape to it. Gee, these look warmer!

As I was mixing, it was interesting looking at the color on the palette and seeing how it looked different when painted on the black gesso. Some of the browns did not look very brown on the palette, but looked great on the black background. I had the same visual disconnect when I started mixing gray. For some reason, a gray that ends up looking neutral on the black background looks too yellow mixed in the palette.

Next up, it was time to play with watercolor. I set up my colors in the palette this morning and left them to dry during the day. Even though I have no idea what I'm doing, that didn't stop me. I painted a bunch of circles with the different paint colors and tried to make some saturated and some less so. My first attempt to mix a new color (purple, of course) turned out a little harsh.

Next up, I wanted to play with the water brush. I grabbed a page of drawing from way back at the beginning of the year (January 11, 2016, to be exact) when I was doing the January daily drawing challenge with Creativebug.  These were drawn with a permanent marker, so it was safe to color them in with the water brush.

This is one of the reasons that I purchased water colors. I want to be able to add color to drawings and I also want to get or make a small travel set.

Last, but not least, I tried a bunch of sketches last night. Mostly, I tried to draw a bottle with a wire and cork closure.  They didn't turn out very well, so I switched to the little zipper back used to carry around drawing supplies. Earlier in the week, I watched a short video about hatch marks. I played around with them trying to show the shape / fold in the bag and to show the shadow.

It was really, really fun to have play time, this afternoon.

Slight Change In Attitude

When I walked away from this one to clean my brushes, my first thoughts were pretty negative. When I walked back after cleaning my brushes, it looked a little better.  

 

I'm a bit out of practice and I have trouble painting dogs. This dog is black and white with black/white/gray splotches.  I haven't figured out how to represent black when you need something besides just the gesso. Lots of excuses.

Still, it was funny that my attitude went from totally negative to more balanced after a short break away.  

It Felt Good To Paint

I finally said "enough". I've been letting too many parts of life press in, so that I have not been painting. Drawing, yes. Painting, no.  It's a busy time of year, but I decided to take time this evening to paint.  It felt good.  

Cat Food Can

Last night, I was at a large, annual holiday party with a large group of friends. When we were driving home, my hubby mentioned a conversation he had with a friend about drawing. This friend dabbled with drawing for a bit this year, when he borrowed one of his kid's books about drawing. Apparently, his daughter really likes to draw and he wanted to learn a little bit about it. The best part of this conversation, which was relayed to me, was my friend's revelation that drawing is about the shapes. How topical!

For folks who continued to make art beyond grade school or who every took an art class or studied art, this is pretty elementary stuff. For the rest of us, it's pretty amazing. It can open up a new world in how to see the world and how to recreate or represent it in a different form.

Last night, I tried sketching my white, covered, butter dish. I started with the bottom part of the dish. When I got to trying to sketch the cover, I couldn't figure out how to do it, because I was focusing on the object. Switching over to see the shapes or, at this point, the outline of the shape, got me going again. When I was drawing the outline, the direction of the lines felt wrong. When I was done, it wasn't too bad. The angles and proportions were off, but there was a bottom portion.  There was a lid. It vaguely had the shape of the butter dish and even looked slightly 3-dimensional.

I'm going a bit of a bait and switch, since after writing about the butter dish I'm posting my drawings of a tiny cat food can. We have a sick cat in the house and she is being pampered with some additional flavors of food.

These drawings are from this morning. Each time I looked at the can, I saw different things. For the last attempt (upper right corner), I finally focused on getting the height and width proportions closer to the truth. There were so many different things to see that make up "the truth" of the can. My brain is not good at taking it all in. For example, it took me a few attempts to "see" that the pop top was closer to the front edge of the can than the back.

What I've Been Doing

Life got busy! However, I also enrolled in an online class, "How To Draw Without Talent" from Sketchbook Skool. Mostly, I've been doing one exercise per day from this class. This takes about 15 minutes per day. It's been a good experience. So far the emphasis has been that you need to capture the shapes, not try to draw the object. It's a good reminder. My brain always wants to switch back to the object.

This was a silly, but fun, exercise where the point was to draw the abstract shapes.

A later exercise was a draw a picture upside down. This was a much more detailed drawing than I typically try. My proportions are off, but the end result is better than I thought it would be!

The best part is that I am picking up a pen or pencil when I have a tiny bit of time available and I try to capture some type of shape. When I was in a drive through, I started to draw the back of the vehicle in front of me. Last night all of the cats were on the bench in the kitchen and I worked on drawing ears and rough outlines of faces.

Brown Is Harder Than Gray

Time has been short. When I've had time, I've mostly been drawing. Tonight, I took the time to practice mixing brown colors. My conclusion is that most of these are not very brown!

Left Hand

It was a busy weekend. Here is a quick drawing of my left hand. This was not blind contour and I also did not use a view finder. I'm not sure how to imply knuckles or shadows on my hand using a pen!

Feathers McGraw

I have a little statute of Feathers McGraw, so last night I tried two quick sketches of him. He is a deceptively simple shape that is hard to capture. The second try (the one that is not shaded) is closer to his shape.

I also got together and painted with one of my friends. I painted an iris for Art For Shelter next year. This is the second time painting from the same picture.

More Sketches

My main subject kept moving, even though she is not feeling well and has been napping a lot. At some point, one of the non-subjects jumped up in front of the main subject and snuggled in a for a nap. The main subject started peering over the top of the non-subject with an annoyed look on her face. I tried to sketch the main subject's face. The main subject decided to be less annoyed and put her head down for a nap. I finished up by trying to do a several quick sketches of yet a different subject's ears.

Trying to capture a cat's ear from the side is interesting!

Quick Sketch

Here is a quick cat sketch.  My intention was to be quick, try to see shapes, and not get fussy. I started to draw the pillow and blanket that the cat was sitting on, but decided not to finish it.

New Experience

Yesterday's painting of Hammett was a good one and made me happy!  There really is no better feeling than being happy with something that you've created. Usually when this happens, the next several paintings just don't quite work out. I am not sure why, but it's also true with juggling, another hobby of mine. If a passing pattern with other jugglers goes really well, the next 2-3 times it seems to go poorly.

Overall last night, the painting process last night went very well. I did it in one sitting. I took several breaks and also spread my time around different parts of the painting, rather than zeroing in on one part, moving onto the next part, and so on. Here is the drawing.

My only goof-up with the painting was on the left side of Dorian's face. The final shape is too round. For some reason if I make an error like this it's always on the left side. Otherwise, I'm thrilled, especially when this one follows a painting that I really, really liked.

Hammett!!

I did another painting, yesterday.  Finally, I was able to concentrate and do. There are a lot of layers of paint in this one, which always seems to happen with orange colors. I may try to do some practice oranges and browns, like I did with gray when Kat assigned it as homework. That helped with the color mixing quite a lot!

I am especially happy with the eyes and the slightly quizzical look. One of Hammett's specialties is to look at you like this.

Hurrah! I painted this one on a board, so I can put a hanger on it and put it on the wall!!

Two Paintings

I carved out time to do a painting yesterday and today.  Here they are.  It's funny, but I feel a little bit rusty and it hasn't really been that long since I last painted!

Bottles

Here are some bottles. I enjoyed trying the different shapes.

What's Important?

What's important? This is the question that I should ask myself whenever I sit down to draw or paint, but especially when I draw or sketch. When I pick up a pen or pencil, I crave accuracy and details because of who I am and how I am. In the moment, I get caught up in the process and it's all good. When I'm done and I look at the finished item, the lack of accuracy is both glaring and disheartening, at times.

It's easy to prop myself back up, when I think back to the beginning of the year and how scary it was to even try and put a line on a piece of paper. I also get that my inner critic is getting a little louder, since my expectations are higher. At the beginning of the year, I was thrilled if what I created even vaguely resembled the actual object. Lastly, I get that we are all our own worst critics.

For the rest of the 30 days of sketching when I post a picture, that's it. Here's what I did. I am going to cut the verbal critique.

As a point of comparison, here's where I was early in the year. I could not see where the lines should go or how to draw them in the correct direction. In this example, I was trying to copy someone from a video.

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I sure don't have the answers, but my questions keep getting better when I look at things. Figuring out how to represent 3-D reality in two dimensions is hard. My kitchen sink presented some challenges today. 

Getting back to the original point, I want to think about what's important. What do you need to capture the bare essence of a kitchen sink, a tissue box, a cat? That doesn't mean sketching quickly. It means thinking more about each line and whether adding it is essential.

Thanksgiving Number 2

Yesterday, I celebrated Thanksgiving with friends. Today, I co-coordinated the gathering of my hubby's family in my mother-in-law's apartment. Before the first family members arrived, I had a small amount of time completely alone in her apartment so I grabbed an object and tried to sketch it. The picture is not at the same angle as the drawing.

I didn't have time to finish my sketch.

After everyone left and I finished cleaning up, I had about 15 minutes to wait. I did a few more quick sketches, including the following.  The proportions and scale of my drawings always seem to be off. Although, it does keep getting better........slowly.