Drawspace lesson S05: How to draw a butterfly.

As much as I love butterflies I could never do a proper proportional drawing of it. It's weird, because it seems to be so simple, but hey, it's not! Recently I included a Poppy in one of my works and swear, It took me several hours to outline something valuable. So no wonder butterflies don't come easy to me!

But here it is, my first colorful butterfly.

I loved it!!! I didn't reach the same colors as on the reference, but I don't mind. I loved doing the white dots and mixing the colors.

The challenge was to draw another butterfly so I did two more.
That's the first (ref image)

And that's the second. (ref image)

The experience was amazing and I had so much fun drawing those!

Drawspace lesson S04: how to draw a cartoon chick.

I don't know how about you but when I opened Lesson S04 and saw the suggested subject, I immediately thought of Tweety, one of the most famous chicks in the world! Tweety and Chicken Little.

This is the Chick from the lesson.

It was a cute, simple and fast sketch.

This is, obviously, Tweety.

Tweety was really simple and it took me about half an hour to complete.

And this is Chicken Little. Yes, I know, it's a bit hairy. I love how the pants turned out, though :).

As you can see, my main struggle was with the color, not the form. When I bout my set of pencils I didn't really think I would need many colors and shades, so I bought a small box of 12. When shading Little I've realized how wrong I was. And actually, at this very moment of writing these lines I do regret for not using my "simple and lousy" colored pencils I mention in my previous posts. Yes, I guess they could be really useful here. Well, next time I'll do it.

Drawspace lesson S03: How to draw a pink cartoon character with colored pencils

Ok, so after reading Lesson S03 I realized that there's not much actually to read there; it is explanation-illustration lesson only. And a challenge. So there it is - the final sketch.

Hm..... I forgot to add a neck to it... Now it looks like a pink pumpkin instead of like a chick.

And this is a challenge. The task was to make some changes to the given form and that's what I did.

So I created a hairy chicken, but I'm not sure of it's identity. Is it an older brother? A father? Or an uncle? Or an Orangutang pretending to be chicken?

Drawspace lesson S02:How to draw a Blue Wooly toy.

Lesson S02 continues with the color drawing. This time it's a blue Wooly toy. It has lots of fur and big blue eyes.

I'm doing this sketch using the 125gr paper and my newly purchased colored pencils. And although I said that I said goodbye to my old and simple colored pencils I realized that I can use them to create basic outlines for my drawings. They are erasable and so hard they are barely seen on the paper.

So first thing first - this is the outline.

This is very light and it's ok that you can hardly see it.

I continued to follow the instruction and this is the final result.

I gave the fur several layers of dark and bright blue. It was really fun and I loved working on it.

After giving it another look I decided to add some red highlights to Wooly's fur.

It looks fuller to me when there's some red in it.

The challenge of this lesson is to draw another toy like this and since I actually have one, although not as furry, I decided to give it a try. That's the toy. 

For starters I created a sketch with my colored pencils. It's hardly visible on my sketches so I darkened it a bit.

After that I filled it in with color.

The original is a bit fluffier than the sketch, bit that's ok with me. Do you like it?

Drawspace lesson S01: Working with color.

This is the first lesson that I'll be working in color. For that matter I will be using my Panda oil chalks and 180gr paper. Since I'm missing dark blue here, I will be adding some purple to make it darker.

This is my first try.

I blended it with tissue paper but id didn't do the sketch any good.

Then I decided to do the same with my lousy colored pencils.

Conclusion - they are indeed lousy.

After that I searched the web for some techniques and found this video. Apparently, you can use a cue tip to make it blend. So I gave it another try.

Not perfect but better.

On the way I added 3 tasks added to my 2014 Resolution list: explore pastel drawing, colored pencil drawing and water color drawing techniques.

P.S. Several days before publishing this post I bought a new set of colored oil-based pencils. Here's the sketch.

Oh, the joy!!! I can't even start to describe the experience, it felt so right! Effortless, easy and smooth work. You can see the difference between the petals: there are two of them that I pressures the pencil harder than on the other three, but still. The effort was at it's minimum. I love it!
The only thing I can say now is goodbye old pencils, hello new ones!!!

Drawspace lesson R02: Exploring Oil painting brushes.

Long time ago I did some oil painting. I both cases the situation was as such: take a brush, put some oil on and do what we tell you to. My first teacher did some explanations about brushes, but nothing I could remember now. My second one - well, taking into consideration that it was in a class, I don't know how much really was she able to explain.

So on one hand I'm pretty happy with this lesson. On the other hand - oil painting is not part of the plan at this moment. So I guess, I'll just remember that this lesson exists and get back to it when it's relevant.
Here's my one and only painting that I did on my own without any help from anyone. I love it.

This is a very old photo, and you can see my shadow on the canvas.

The imperfect sketch: how to deal with the fear of not making it perfect?

No, really, how do you let go the perfection?

When I just starting with everything that has to do with art, I worked with a wonderful artist that makes everything look perfect. So I learned from him. And after that I began my studies in an Art college. The teacher I had there tried her best to make me let go if these "it must be perfect" methods to let my creativity grow (oh, by, If only I was that smart then!) I was a hard one to break so I think she gave up on me at some point. 

So these days, getting back to drawing and, hopefully, painting really soon, I have to deal with my "be perfect" demons. But how do you really do that? How do you make yourself to like this unfinished and imperfect sketch you make? How do you make yourself  let go of that character that is not really a character? I don't know. I guess you just doodle and doodle. I guess it's just like with brain storming technique: at first you don't look for good ideas, but for ideas in general. 

Drawspace lesson R01: Working with color

This is the first time in this program when it's students are suggested to work with color. I will be exploring two media here: a simple colored pencil and an oil Panda chalk. Both are new to me and both are interesting.

The first thing I realized was that my pencils don't mix really well, so I might as well change them. It's either that or I don't know how to use them properly. It could definitely be both.

My oil Panda chalks mixed a bit better, but still the mix is not as good as the existing greens, purples and oranges that come with the set.

I didn't bother on making the color wheel, although I realize it's important when working with color. But I'm sure that the moment I need one I will be able to make it.

So far, so good....

Drawspace lesson Q06: Shading a Cylinder

I love shading basic forms. I love it so much that I decided to make an egg shading my monthly exercise. So when Lesson Q06 came along, I gladly - and quickly - completed the task.

For the challenge I decided to shade a coffee mug.

I love the way the mug itself is shaded, but it's handle, the really difficult part of it, is drawn pretty poorly. But like I once said here, a mugs handle is a world in itself and deserves a separate treatment.

Developing creativity: Doodling with Illustration Class .

In my search for Creativity development exercises I came upon a site called Illustration Class. One of the things it suggests are free Creativity Development Exercises for download. I went through some of them and found them really nice. So from now on I will be using some of the suggested there for my practice.

The first lesson I chose is called "What do you see". The idea is to fill a paper with scribbles and then use the empty/negative space to create images. They actually created a scribbled sheet for you but obviously, you can (and I think, you should) make one of your own.

The first thing I saw on that paper was a balloon. And then another one. After a while all I could see were balloons made of loops. So I decided to fill them with some color first. I took a time frame of 15 minutes and started working.

After eliminating all the possible loops I took another paper and began the exercise itself.
To make it easier I first decided to outline the form I would be working on. This is the result.

And then I took another 15 minutes and made my own scribbles page.

I had so much fun doing that!!! I really enjoyed this exercise. It is really challenging and good in so many aspects:

• It took me away from the co-called perfect sketching I'm used to. 
• It makes me work with irregular form and be creative as to squeeze the imaginary item into the given form. 
• It challenges me to see something that might or might now be there.

It was so cool, I loved it!