DRAWING CHALLENGE Day FOUR (4)

Draw your favourite paint brush, with or without paint on the tip..

I want a full drawing please, all the values, not just a quick little sketch with the bare outlines. :-))))

I am so jealous of Ree's gorgeous Conte pencils she is using for her drawings.

String

Well here is mine. I smiled when I saw Colleen's, she had the same idea as I........
I drew mine at the Market this afternoon, and I am not happy with it. I took a photo of the set up, and I just may draw it again. I was having trouble seeing that paper. The sun was streaming in, and white paper, it was very glarey. I did not draw the detail of the strands of the string as well as I would have liked to. Still I did do it, and it took me half an hour to do..

My very ancient and much used wooden spoon, tea cup and end of a tatty piece of rope (no string in the house). JJ, I can't keep up with this on a daily basis.

Trying to Comment

Hi group! I've emailed JJ because I have commented on your drawings, but for some reason they aren't showing up ????

Just want to let you know that I've tried... but not sure why my comments are disappearing into cyberspace...

Thanks for the warm invite!

Mary Lou

Day Three Drawing Challenge

Today, we draw a piece of string!

My cup

I tried to draw the cup and the shadow on the table. I know there is something wrong with the top of the cup ...... but I still had fun drawing this one .....

Drawing 2 My Coffee/Tea cup.

I drew my cup sitting on the lid of my Toshiba laptop. I need to practice drawing cup handles..

The $10 Spoon

Hi all! Trying to figure out how to post here - thank you for the invite!

I bought a new set of Oneida flatware last year - service for 8. I liked it, and wanted to get more, but my husband nixed it. So I asked for a 4-place setting for Christmas. My daughter-in-law "borrowed" a spoon when she was over one time so she could match the pattern. In the meantime, we'd had a party, and when doing the dishes, I counted the flatware and was missing a spoon! I was pissed, thought someone threw it out w/the trash and plastic spoons. So, I ordered ONE spoon to replace it. It was $6.99, plus shipping, total of $10. Hubby just shook his head, "who counts their spoons?" LOL - then I found out the rest of the story on Christmas day...

I tried drawing it twice, and obviously need a lot of practice. Used a 6B pencil.

I'll try to participate as much as possible... thanks again!

Mary Lou

DRAWING CHALLENGE Day Two (2)

Today we will draw our favourite coffee mug.

Teaspoon ....easy peasy....LOL

Well that was what I thought ......until I started to draw it! I have been so used to drawing from photographs that I found drawing from life very difficult. I also see that I need to get some darker pencils ....after seeing the different values in JJ's drawing.
The sun was shining in on the table when I was trying this one and the dark shadow, from the teaspoon, looked lovely ..... I did this one quickly .....just before I headed out to linedancing ..... does that excuse me for submitting a drawing that leaves a lot to be desired? LOL

Day one Drawing SERVING SPOON

Drawn in my sketchbook

DAILY CHALLENGE Sharpen your pencils.

We are going to draw one thing a day. If we do this, we will have more chance of getting out of our painting slump, those of us who are in one, and we will improve our techniques.

Drawing every day, will enhance our skills. Trust me, you really do need to know how to draw to be able to produce successful paintings. Paintings you can truly be proud of. You start drawing every day, and the "penny is going to drop" the "light bulb is going to go on", your confidence levels will increase 100% +

Tomorrows drawing will be a spoon. Draw a teaspoon, a desert spoon, a soup spoon, a serving spoon, any kind of spoon, just draw a spoon, and post it on the blog. Drawing needs to be no smaller than 6"x8", and as big as you like.

I have a sketch book, 8.5" x 6" I draw/sketch in. In fact I am on my third or 4th one of these, and it is so much fun to look back through the pages ans see what I have sketched. Some of the things I had forgotten about, and it is so neat to revisit them, see how much I have improved.

I look forward to seeing your drawings all of you.

NB

If you don't want to draw a spoon, if there is something else you would rather sketch, please do, and post it. The spoon is for those of you who say to me, "I don't know what to draw" you know who you are hahaha

Right then - sharpen those pencils and lets get drawing!

I am recently back from Tasmania which I really enjoyed. Although I didn't meet any of the blog challenges, I did do some holiday watercolours. Here is one of Binalong Bay, a favourite spot of mine. I have included a reference photo so you can see what I was looking at.

New Challenge Delayed

BTW, no new challenge until all the efforts for this one are in.

Tea Pots and Puppy

This is my effort, acrylic on Canvas, 8X10".

This is my new puppy, Scotia, to go along with our other similar dog, Nova. Being from Nova Scotia, it was alwys intended to have two dogs, it jsut took three years to find one of the same size and type. (Yorkie and Maltese and Yorkie and mini poodle.

Anyway, I wanted to show something other than plain kitchen things. Hope you like....

Why has everyone been so quiet of late?

Challenge for JUNE 1st - 7th.

THE CHALLENGE IS:-

1. You must change one object in this picture. That means remove one object in the reference picture, and replace it for something of your choice.

2. You must change the colour of one thing in this picture. That means, you must change the colour of one entire object in the reference picture.




Paintings to be posted on MONDAY 8th June

Accidental Abstract

This started out as a third try at a background for my cylinder idea. I posted a similat one on WC today. Acrylic 16X20 on canvas.

It's......it's ..... it's a cat ....yes that's what it is ....a startled cat .....

This is my fourth attempt at this kind of art ....I really enjoyed trying this out and while I was doing them all I thought they would look ok .....but they ended up not looking ok at all ..... maybe if I practice a bit more..... I did find it very relaxing ....
Thank you Ree for the excellent challenge ...... lucky I had some oil pastels here .....
3" X 4"

On the Lookout. (Ree's scratchart challenge)

This is painted on 8"x12" mat-board. I had so much fun, I laughed all the way through the scratching. Ree will testify to that she was on the phone to me while I was doing it.

The laying of the colour was easy enough, but laying the black on top was hard work, but really worth it. I love these guys, and they look so neat in a frame..

6 Tips on How to Draw Accurately by M. Stephen Doherty. American Artist Magazine.

1. Start by drawing shapes, not identifiable objects. You'll hear this advice over and over again in art classes and workshops. To understand what it really means, think about the way children draw faces. They know that a face has two eyes, two ears, a centered nose, and two lips. No matter how the person facing them is posed, children will insist on including all the features, even if they can only see one eye, one ear, and a protruding nose. They draw what they know, not what they see. To some extent, adults do exactly the same thing.

2. Consider the negative shapes as much as you do the positive shapes. Students often find it difficult to determine how to draw an arm that extends away from a model's body or the distance between two objects sitting on a table. The way to do that is to imagine that the negative space,” or the open space between the model's body and her arm, is a solid object with a height, width, and length. The same technique can be used when trying to determine how far one building is from another or how high a head is above a model's shoulders. It helps to deal with the negative space in the same way you deal with the positive shapes.

3. Visualize and draw the lines you can't see in order to draw the visible lines accurately. Sometimes the best way to draw something that is partially concealed from your view is to continue the lines as if you could actually see it. For example, if you want to determine the curvature of a bowl filled with fruit, draw the complete circular top as if the bowl were empty, and then erase the sections that are obstructed. And if you want to know how far a leg extends beyond a person's waistline, drop an imaginary plumb line from the waist to the floor, and then evaluate the shape of the triangle formed by the leg, floor, and plumb line.

4. Draw connected shapes, not disconnected shapes. It's very difficult to calculate how far a person's head is from the bottom of his or her feet, the distance from one ear to the other, or the distance from a far tree to one in the foreground unless you draw all the shapes in between. That is, after guessing at the total height of a standing figure and establishing a scale for the drawing so that it fits on the sheet of paper, work your way down from the head to the shoulders, from there to the waist, on to the knees, etc., so you can judge each shape in relationship to the others.

5. Draw light guidelines between shapes to better judge the distances between them. Artist Robert Liberace recently issued the first of five instructional DVDs on drawing, and in it he provides lots of useful information. Among the artist's recommendations is to start by making very light, straight lines between all the component parts of the figure or still life objects to guide your hand as you begin to refine the drawing. Then gradually add more lines using Conté crayons, graphite, charcoal, or Prismacolor Verithin pencils to darken the edges of the shapes and the shadow patterns in between.

6. Start by drawing the lightest values and build to the darkest. Most artists find that it makes sense to gradually build from the lightest areas of their drawings to the darkest so they have an opportunity to make adjustments along the way without damaging the surface of the paper or creating ugly smudges where they have erased inaccurate lines.

M. Stephen Doherty

Work in progress

This is what I am working on at present. Acrylic, gallery wrapped canvas 18"x18". I have the water done, now just need to put the boats in.. :-)

Flooded Studio :-((

Brisbane's average rainfall is around 1200 mm. a year. We received 106mm of that rain in the last 24 hours, and a good portion of that is in my studio! Talk about suffering for my art. I had my housemates steel capped work boots on to paint in today. I started to mop up, but that bucket is a killer for my back. See how the water runs out the front door? I am trying to talk my housemate into going down there and mopping for me. Don't like my chances. It is every man for himself in this house..

There is plenty more rain to come. Right up until Friday..

On the Bay

16" x 12" acrylic on canvas. What do you think, is it too stark? There were two yachts in the reference photo, and I was thinking of adding one of them, but I am not sure ?

Lighthouse

This is a blue-black and white, 8X10" acrylic on canvas. I showed it to my wife today as I finished it and she hated it so much, she took it to her office tonite to hang. Now I am current agian. Next? :-}

My monochromatic painting ....

This one is also in Ult Marine Blue and white and is also M Graham acrylics .... about 5" X 6"