The Nameless Cheetah - 2/27/08

I bought this cute stuffed animal at the Vienna Zoo. I like how his spots came out noncircular, and instead are more realistic looking. I'm happy with his muzzle even though the brown shading is a bit drastic and his head is a bit messed up. His right (the closest one) ear gave me incredible difficulty. Do you see the white that outlines the black on the left? That's not supposed to be there. That resulted from be drawing and redrawing his ear over and over in pen. I'm trying to not be as obsessive about perfect positioning and proportion, which is why I started in pen. Pen is permanent; I will not be obsessively erasing over and over in order to get the perfect line. I need to have better results on the first try, and look for the whole general shape rather than get nitpicky, and pen is the perfect medium to force me to do this. When I want to do a more serious drawing/painting, the kind that takes you more than an hour, I will sketch it out in pencil first.

His right front paw appears to be incredibly big and out of proportion. The problem was that it was laying on it's side, and what needed to be drawn was the entire bottom, where the other paws got a bit obscured by the surface they were resting on. It's actually the right size, it just doesn't look like it. It's a bit like drawing a person's hands in front of their face; they always look very large.

Materials
moleskine sketchbook
Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils

Parched - 1/18/08

My first watercolor since... I don't know, probably third grade. For Christmas I picked up some very cheap watercolor pencils by Staedler. When I say cheap, I mean cheap. I got 12 pencils for $3; these are definitely student quality, or a quality worse than student quality. Anyways, I bought these pencils simply because I had never heard of water color pencils and because I had started messing around with pen and ink and had seen the gorgeous pen and watercolor combos. This painting is horrible, one that I would be embarrassed to show anyone in person, but the internet lends me that lovely bit of anonymity. I'm proud to show off my horrible work, as long as I don't have to see people's reactions.

Doing this painting (is it a painting or is watercolor still referred to as a drawing? I'm going with painting, after all, I used a brush.) brought home to me that:
1) I don't like the pencils, but I really like the medium
2) I remember now why I never drew in pencil during high school

Frankly, my pencil drawing abilities are horrible. I like charcoal for it's smudginess, it's messiness, and above all, the ability to blend with my fingers. Colored pencils are so refined, so non-blendable with hands. Don't get me wrong, I have the utmost respect for those who can draw well in pencil, probably because I can't at all. I ooh and ahh over the pretty drawings. With watercolor, I think I'm going to have to force myself to get over my aversion to pencils. I love seeing the crisp lines blur and transform into rivets of color.

To this end, yesterday I went to ArtMedia and purchased 8 of the Albrecht Durer watercolor pencils. I've heard great things about these pencils on the EDM boards, so I thought I'd give them a try. I was thinking about buying the 12 pack, but I didn't want to spend $18 and bought separately they're nearly the exact same price as the kit. I did pick my 8 colors from those offered in the 12-pack, and the next 4 will be the colors offered there as well. I'll just add 2 - 6 pencils every time I get paid, which works out to once a month.

I do like how the sand dunes/hills in this drawing have a good color variation in them. The sky was good until it went to white rather than lighter blue. That's just a matter of putting more color in that area. The one thing I really don't like is how the tree turned out, or more specifically the tree's shadow I tried to do. It just made it look like the tree had black tree branch like smoke rising from it's topmost branches.

Materials
Canson Watercolor 140lb CP
Staedtler Watercolor pencils

Clean - 2/26/08

The counterpart to Messy. I spent more time on the chair frame this time, and like how it came out although I would add a bit more consistency (ie. make it more of a line) to the dark spots on the frame on the right side. I spent less time on the cushion this time, and it shows. It was about 3 a.m. so I was really tired, and just wanted to go to bed. It was more of a 12 minute sketch than a 20 minute one, so I'm creating a separate category for those. Hopefully, when I get better at sketching I can do most of my sketches in 10 minutes as I would love to do some plein air drawings.

Messy - 2/25/08

My messy papasan chair. This was one of my 2o minute sketches, very minimal shading. I like how the chair frame came out, but I don't like the corner of the blanket seemingly floating in midair, nor how when I tried to minimize a bit of the back it only made it stand out more. It detracts from the front and erases nearly all the depth. I definitely need to sharpen my charcoal skills. Get back to where I was when I made Gollum (which I will get a picture of sometime when I'm in Seattle)