Friday, October 19, 2018

More sketches for the class

The course presenters wanted a basic sketch of a mammal. They hinted this will be part of the final next week so I went with what I know best - a Tan.
  
   

 Then they wanted a basic sketch of a bird.  This is an American Robin. 

Until next week...

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Quick draw, slow paint


I'm going to call this process "quick draw, slow paint". This was started during the Beaverton Art Mix "Quick Draw" competition. I had walked the farmers market just a couple of weeks ahead of time to scope out what was there to give some thought to what I wanted to paint to develop a sort of game plan so I could focus on getting what I needed done finished in two hours during the competition. I had a plan A and a plan B. What I did not take in to consideration was if neither subject was at the market that weekend. Neither was. Buggers! I had to quick figure out a plan C. In the back of my head I kept thinking keep it simple. As you have probably figured out I apparently don't do simple even though at the time I thought I was.  

By the way, I now realize there's NO way I could have painted fast enough to finish this in two hours. But I do like the end result so it was worth finishing after the fact.

Monday, October 15, 2018

Botanical illustration continued...


This is a study of a flower from my yard.  Because it's fall and it had been cold and wet, there were exactly four left in the garden.  I carefully picked just one to work from.  It lasted long enough to finish this assignment, then it was like it knew it could go and all of the petals fell off.  

Monday, October 8, 2018

Quick Draw


I participated in the Quick Draw event at the Beaverton's Arts Mix this last weekend. Although I'm not giving up on the notion of drawing quickly, I have to admit I'm not all that "quick" in my execution. In spite of my best efforts in two hours this is what I managed to finish. I didn't enter it in the competition in this state of undone but as you can see it has the potential to be something interesting so I'm going to go ahead and finish it.

Wednesday, October 3, 2018

Quick Studies

This weeks assignment was to do some quick studies.  I didn't think it through before heading out and grabbed my ordinary sketch pad. I had intended to use watercolor to add my color sample but couldn't on this paper because water anything would have destroyed the paper so my only option was to use colored pencil. I like how it turned out and it reminds me I need to go back to working on my squirrel chronicle series.  They really are hilarious to watch.  

If you want to look at this closer, just click on the image.  
#nhi101x @NHI101x @newcastlexnhi

Tuesday, October 2, 2018

Botanical sketch


Ok, this officially catches me up on the botanical course I'm taking... until tomorrow when this weeks lesson is posted. 

Mental note to self:
Pick something simpler to draw for assignments.

#nhi101x @NHI101x @newcastlexnhi

Monday, October 1, 2018

Grey scale


I'm taking an on-line class from the University of Newcastle in Australia studying Drawing Nature, Science and Culture: Natural History Illustration. One of the assignments is drawing a landscape using just grey values. I haven't done a simple drawing in quite a while so it was an interesting experiment. What this is is a scene from eastern Montana a couple weeks ago. What you can't tell without color is the sky was a deep dark blue-gray threatening to rain at any moment in contrast to the golden brown bone dry autumn hills.

Click on the image to see it larger.