Sketching apples, peppers, & leaves

I managed to finish day 2 of 14 days of graphite drawing yesterday, yay! Of course I haven’t done today’s drawing…yet ^_^*. I got to use my cardboard box still life diorama thing for the first time, too. It has a hole cut out of the top that I can place a light against, to have really harsh shadows, rather than the general ambient light of a typical well-lit room. And I’ve also got a bonus page with studies of leaves to share – so that next time I’m hiking, I feel better prepared to draw forest landscapes.

I really like how my lines turned out. ^_^ (And yes, I could have taken a better photo… going to need to figure out a lighting set up for when the sun has already set…)

I don’t know if I was going “slow” enough to be super intentional, but I am NOT feeling in calm, meditative mood with my studies at the moment. Nonrepresentational doodles, sure, I can relax more and take my time. But when it’s so clearly a thing I’m doing to get better at representational drawing, I get too caught up in my own thoughts/worries, and so it’s almost a rush to keep going so I don’t give up half way through.

Strong light and shadow contrast in the still life box above. The only downside is it is a smaller box, so just for small studies. Better than nothing, though!

I sketched it while watching Dimension 20’s Mentopolis on my phone, but I don’t feel like I was too distracted. It’s easier to mostly listen along when the video is on my phone, since it’s a smaller screen. I’d started watching the episode while washing dishes earlier yesterday evening, so it was nice to finish it. I’m…on the fence about subscribing to Dropout TV to watch the rest. I really want to, but one more subscription ah… IDK. Not to mention, I have so much of Critical Role campaign 3 I’ve never seen that I want to get caught up on. But I could do both, probably? I certainly want to support both shows. Okay, haha, I think I talked myself into subscribing to Dropout while blogging this. ^_^*

Of course, here is my daily whine about not liking image processing in Gimp. To be fair, I had some pretty terrible lighting going on, just angled my floor lamp to light up the page, after the sun had already set. Adjusting levels can only do so much if the original image isn’t great. And this sketchbook paper is not white, it’s more a cream/yellow, so that is fun to color balance >_>*. In the end, I decided as far as rough sketchbook pages go, I would just get the colors close, crop it, watermark it, and consider it good enough.

These leaf studies were studies of Pexels reference photos (top left branch, top right branch, and a forest path). Created with Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils, which are oil based but still fairly hard, combined with Posca color pencils, which are a creamy oil and wax combination, and layer nicely. I’m still figuring out how to blend colors, and balance loose lines with just enough detail.

These turned out messier than I was wanting, but still, it was a fun page to finish. And I drew these today while watching Art by Tuna on YouTube. I really enjoy her artist alley videos – it makes me want to go to conventions either to shop or as an artist. I joined her Patreon Lunchbox club a couple months ago and the stickers are very nice, highly recommend!

In music I’m listening to: I always feel so mystical yet productive working to Queen of Sorcery by Wizards of Aldur. It’s got a 1960s, Jack Vance Sci-fi / fantasy vibe to it, like space opera plus D&D. Speaking of Jack Vance, I’m about half way through reading The Jack Vance Treasury. I have it on Kindle on my phone, so I mostly read it in waiting rooms, waiting for takeout, etc. Or super late at like 3am if I wake up from a nightmare and need to distract my brain for a bit to get back to sleep (happens more than I would like *sigh*). I really want to read his The Dying Earth series.

Now to go chop some veggies for tomorrow – I’ll be making slow cooker vegetarian lasagna, but the less work I have to do early in the morning, the better.

‘Til next time. <3