Courses & Sketch Hub

This was harder than it seems. I think part of the problem is that my ballpoint pen has too big of a point for those skinny “branches”. I do like the texture on my “trunk” though. I am really looking forward to the eyes. I struggle with eyes but a week of eyes should help me improve lol.

I bought a blending stump. It really does make smudging easier. Over these past few weeks I realized I really enjoy creating patterns/texture. The repetition really is soothing.The fourth succulent

I started to shade in the leaves, but ai preferred them with less shading and my pen kept making blobs. So I stopped at this stage.

Four more succulents. Love all the different shapes and textures of them, what a great subject to choose.

Second cactus

First cactus

Cacti day 1

Another painting from the abstract watercolours course. I am absolutely loving this course, Irene, it’s got the same sort of magic as seeing pictures in a cloudy sky!

A quick contour drawing (with a little shading added lol) I know it wasn’t the point, but I was proud I could, for first time, fit everything in the page, more or less.

The perspective is a bit off, and I am struggling with random ink blobs, but I an enjoying shading with ball point.

It’s fun to try to make everyday objects look special with shading. Of course this is only working because the subjects themselves are simple shapes, relatively speaking.

Four sketches of garden tools. The brush is my favourite, it’s surprising how you can catch the essence of it in so short a time.

Interesting experiment. I love the color of this fountain pen ink but only for writing because it is not waterproof So it was fun to exploit its one “fault” lol. definitely need to work on my waterbrish control. Water kind of dripped so the top of my wheelbarrow look like it was eaten by rust!

I had a lot of fun trying to shade these with my ballpoint pen. I changed pens because I read that it is easier to control ink flow (and therefore get lighter lines) with a stick ballpoint instead of the click ball point I had been using. To me the shading on the left side of my shovel is not quite right. it doesn’t seem to go in on that side. Maybe my shadow is not quite dark enough? Ideas? Or is it just me being critical?

I’ve had a Pentel brush pen for years but have never used it because it is so hard to control. So I dusted it off and tried again. Still hard to control lol.

Not my best, but okay for a first try/quick sketch. Definitely a subject I would not have attempted before. The negative space approach helped though I still ended up with wonky proportions 🤪

Still loving drawing tigers. No idea why lol. But I do know that ai enjoy outlining the stripes. Go figure. I will be sorry to see the tigers finished. I think a good follow up would be giraffes - spots and long necks, what’s not to like? 🤣

I gpt the acrylic markers you suggested, Irene. I used the brush tip of one for the first of the garden tools sketches. It's not a very good sketch as I haven’t mastered controlling the pressure on the brush tip yet, but I'm sure that will come with practice.

The last of my oak skeptches. I'm very grateful for the tips on how to use a blending stump, i've had one for years and didn’t know what to do with it.

Tigers are really hard! I ran out of room on the page for his chin and neck, but since they were hard to see in the reference photo, that’s okay.

Glad I came back to tiger week. Hard but fun.

I like how the eye turned out on this one.

Hmmm looks a bit crazed lol

I always find pencil (and charcoal) easier with smudging because I really struggle with creating volume with hatching. So this tree in pencil was easier for me than the previous tree in ball point pen. Also I found it easier to not get totally lost in all the branches . Maybe I am (finally) getting better at handling complex items.

I like my acorn better. 😆

I enjoyed drawing the buds at different angles, but it just doesn’t have the glow of the leaf in the photo.

I really struggled with this, but I promised myself I would share the good, the bad, and the ugly lol. So here it is. I think my least favorite so far. I got really lost when ai tried to add foliage, so I stopped lol.

Another painting from the abstract landscapes course. I think this is my favourite one so far.

Not sure it looks like bark but I enjoyed creating the textures

Something not quite right in the perspective . it looks like it is face toward us, other than the feet which are moving away from us. A contortionist chicken lol

I’m ready for my close-up Mr. DeMille lol.

I’ve discovered I enjoy drawing chickens

A hairy short neck chicken lol

Oak tree and bark.

I'm finding I prefer sketching in pencil, I thonk it's just because Imhappen to have a pencil that sits nicely in my hand. It's a Faber Castell one, triangular with grippy dots so it doesn’t slip in my hand.

One final chicken

Another fun painting from the abstract landscapes course

After a horrific move across town by foot and hand dolly lol, I finally found time to get back to my sketching . And voila a rooster.

More chickens. I think the hen is dancing!

My latest painting from the abstract landcapes course. I'm absolutely loving this course and I think I've found my favourite style of art here. Once I've done all the lessons I intend to go through again doing them all in different colours.

I’m inordinately happy with my first chicken lol. Maybe because I really like the color purple. But I think I got her beady eye right, and I am very proud I was able to fit her on one page in my sketchbook without making weird proportions.

Final moth. I am not so satisfied with my butterfly/moths. But I am excited to try the chickens and roosters next. Something a little more silly lol.

Chicken and rooster. I always seem to make heads too big! I start off with them the right size and then seem to keep making them bigger and bigger. My subconscious must think heads are very important!

All of the ghost lines makes it look

like the moth’s right wing is fluttering lol.

Last butterfly. I got the proportions off (didn’t plan out the whole thing ahead in my mind, so I got the flower, then the body, too big and had to spill over to next page 🙄 Proportions to fit everything I want onto my page is something I struggle with, al lot.

Really enjoyed drawing these

I decided to take advantage of my 4 color bic ballpoint lol. Not the right blue but that okay.

Another from the abstract landscapes course. I don’t think I like this as much as the last two I did. Maybe I should have used something a bit softer than black, maybe a very dark blue.

I know butterflies are supposed to be smooth but I kind of like my scribble filling in the black.

Today was key drawing party lol.

Quite happy with the first although his eyes are a bit close together making him look angry, but I'm not sure what went wrong with the second, he came out looking more like a sheep! I used black ballpoint pen

Normally in a complex subject like this with all the little curls etc I would get lost and get frustrated (ex. pinecones and those swirl kind of succulents) but this time I felt free to just scribble to represent the swirls and I was not going for exact copy, just the impression. So instead of frustration I felt joy lol. Also I loved when Irene said (paraphrasing here) “I don’t go for perfect art. Imperfect art is better than no art and quantity counts”

I see Brooklyn Bridge and the New York skyline, my husvand sees a marina with sailing yachts moored. But we both agree we love it!

My latch in the shadow looks round while the part in light is not lol. But that is okay.I like how the spiral thing turned out

On to week 2. This is really a beautiful key to draw with just the right amount of intricacy. Maybe black ballpoint would have been better though lol

This was really fun.

I really LOVED creating this landscape. I'm getting much more confident with controlling the paint both with a brush and a card, plus since I have no soft pastels in the right colours, I dug out my Brusho crytals and scattered some of them around, it was fascinating to watch them react with the varying amounts of water on the paper.

The lama in ballpoint pen. I’m liking the light sketchy lines from trying to get the shape right.

Here are my two moths from butterflies and moths week. Looking forward to next week's tigers!