• Digital gesture drawings of five figures in action poses
    Digital Painting,  Figure Drawing

    Gesture Drawings

    Nothing felt like it was working with drawing today. I started two other drawings before deciding to do some gesture drawings in Photoshop. Even then it was a bit of a struggle – my shoulder is bothering me again and I’ve been tense all day. I dislike the feeling of being impatient with myself while drawing.

  • Stylized drawing of a woman in a pink suit holding a clip board and looking pensive. Art supplies of markers and pens surround the drawing.
    Drawing

    Copic Marker Practice

    Tonight’s practice was a pencil sketch that I inked with a new Copic drawing pen I recently bought online. I had spent the morning working on fountain pen mark making pieces (for my mark making project), including this new black pen and a brown ink Copic drawing pen I’ve had for a while. I was pleased to see these pens feel like a fountain pen, but I wanted to see if they were indeed “Copic Proof” (which I assume means waterproof/bleed proof in general). So tonight I sketched and inked a little drawing on marker paper to insert into my mixed media sketchbook. Hoping to finish the fountain pen drawings…

  • Digital paintings of cloth folds in purple and orange. Text ontop says cloth folds.
    Digital Painting

    Cloth Fold Studies

    Well, tonight was a reverse of yesterday: I spent most of the time after dinner watching the last three episodes of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell with Ricky and left a pitifully small amount of time to make art, create a featured image, and post to here. Still, it was worth it – I love that show so much! Now I just need a show that’s like that but with sorceresses – kind of The Witcher but just the Aretuza parts. Ahem – anyway – for tonight, the quickest thing I felt like painting was a few studies of folds in fabric.

  • A watercolor painting of a black woman in a chemise, standing on a red carpet and in front of a patterned green wallper. There are water color palette next to the painting
    Figure Drawing,  Life Musings,  Sketchbooks,  Traditional Painting

    Finished Painting: Chemise Study

    I was thinking I’d title this painting “A Soft Chemise” or something, but it was meant to be a study of cloth folds, so maybe just keeping “study” in the title works. I don’t want to have to title every sketch and drawing in my sketchbook. That would be rough, giving things titles is just ugh. Yesterday’s experiments were useful, though I ended up using a lot less of the iridescent paint – just on the gold slippers.

  • An open sketchbook with drawings of leaves and still life studies, pens and pencils are piles ontop of the right page
    Sketchbooks,  Traditional Painting

    Sketchbook experiments: watercolor, colored pencil, and metallic paint

    Well, of all the days I was sure I might skip out on painting or posting to my blog, today was it. I almost skipped online dance class — just feeling tired and anxious. I’m also stressed about the weather disasters happening around the country (and hoping things get better for so many people suffering this week). I decided that I wouldn’t try to make progress on my painting from yesterday, but instead would experiment and try stuff out to better prepare for working on it tomorrow.

  • A painting of a black woman in a chemise and a sketchbook page of skintones swatched from watercolor mixes
    Figure Drawing,  Sketchbooks,  Traditional Painting

    Watercolor Skin Tone Practice

    I swatched several different skin tone blends before painting in the figure of my current work in progress, hoping I wouldn’t make the skin too blotchy, as seems the case with most of my watercolor skin tone efforts. Alas… I still overworked the paint and it’s still blotchy. I think I keep trying to treat watercolor like digital painting, and then I push too far and overwork it. Blah. More blending practice is necessary!

  • A watercolor painting of a woman in a chemise, standing in front of a wall with green patterend wallpaper
    Sketchbooks,  Traditional Painting

    Adding a Background (at the last minute)

    Well, I was hoping I’d be further along with this painting, but I became quite distracted with painting a soothing pattern in the background. I didn’t originally plan this sketch/painting to have a background – it was more about studying cloth folds – but I decided to go for it. In my mind, the character was standing in the palace of Versailles in a chemise*. So it wasn’t so much picking a background at random, in as much as it was trying to feel what would be around the character I had in mind. I also decided to make her expression a bit less melancholy.