Workshop Demos

I promised to post pics of the demonstrations that I did at my workshop on Landscape textures. The goal of the workshop was to imply texture without painting every blade of grass. I am a big fan  of random marks made with brushwork or with spatter and quite literally throwing the paint at the paper. With practice, you can usually get the paint in the general area that you wanted.
The class called this the "splash, splat and thump technique."
Here are 4 of my demonstration pieces. I think it makes more sense to see the techniques demonstrated within the context of a painting rather than in isolation as "this is grass or this is distant trees" so started 4 separate compositions. I might continue working on these today. 

These are all painted  on 10 x 14 inch sheets

Landscape Textures

I gave a workshop to the art group, The Artist's Circle this past weekend. I promised to do some work on creating the illusion of textures in the landscape using watercolor.  I  love winter paintings but I think that most people have had enough of winter in this part of the world so I wanted to do a summer painting. I chose a subject that has lots of opportunity for implying texture and while I might not use this much texture in most of my work, it was a good sample for the class.

 Allyson's Lavender Garden 14 x 21 inches

Here is the process.

It starts with the drawing to clarify the value pattern and placement of elements withing the picture plane.

Next is a colour study (little sketch beside the drawing). It is very helpful have a colour pallet in mind before you start on the painting.

Most of the background is in place at this stage.
Sorry I did not take more photos as the painting progressed but sometimes you just need to keep going.








I did 4 demonstrations of texture techniques and will show photos of these in another post.

Thanks to the members of the Artist's Circle for having me back. I always love to spend time with  old friends and meet some new ones.

Puppy Portraits

OK, it is a lot easier to do animal portraits than people portraits. Perhaps we are much more accepting of a more generic representation of a certain breed "looking just like" our beloved pet. or may be I just find it more challenging to draw my own species.
Here are Elvis and Miles.

Elvis, Charcoal and white chalk, 9 x 12 inches

Miles, continuous ink line drawing with watercolour wash

Two Drawing Methods

I am working diligently on my portrait practice but still with mixed results. Here are two of my recent drawings.
Thanks to both of my subjects for allowing me to share these works on line.

 pastel pencil 14 x 11 inches

This pretty young woman had a very concerned look on her face but I could not resist the chance to render her beautiful hair in sanguine pastel.
The original drawing is a little lighter than shown here and looks less severe because of the lighter tones.

Ink and watercolour, 7 x 11  inches

I find it much easier to do a continuous line drawing of a face in profile than straight on. Not all of the shapes are accurate and you can see some places where I have made restatements of the lines. The watercolour wash serves to add a little shading.
It even kind of looks like Don.

Portrait Studies

I have spent my time this year further developing my drawing skills and portrait drawing is a great way to challenge your skills of observation and accuracy of execution. My hope is that this attention to detail will help with all of my drawing.
I have been trying various methods and procedures and will write about that another time.

I have been working from life but so far, these drawings are not ready for public review! By the way, I am in need of models who would like to sit for an hour or so for me and as long as you do not expect a great work of art or even a very good likeness to result, I could really use the practice.

The portraits below have been drawn from photographs. Some of my first attempts  represent only a passing likeness of the subject. I am feeling more confident with the process of portrait drawing and continue to work on accuracy.

 Claire,  8.5 x 11 inches, sanguine

This is one of my latest and actually looks like the model

 model in charcoal 1, 8.5 x 11, charcoal and pastel

 Continuous Ink Line drawing. 8.5 x 11 inches
This is a good likeness of the model. The initial marks were placed a continuous line drawing with the shading added at the end.

 Sanguine and white pastel. 8.5 x 11 inches
I love this sensitive medium and the resulting drawing is lovely although it is not a good likeness of the model.

After the last class

Our last drawing class for this session is over and I hope people enjoyed it as much as I did. The last 4 classes featured drawing demonstrations and lessons by guest artists, Bonny Baker, Peter Smith, Ray Sanford and Cluny Maher. Each of these accomplished artists has a style and approach to drawing that is unique to them. I hope that students are encouraged to seek there own style and develop an approach to drawing that suits their own personality and artistic goals.

I have been inspired by examining the work of other artists (including my students!) and here are some  recent examples from my sketch book.

 These first 2 are little compositional sketches. They are 4 x 4 inches. These are a little larger than my normal thumbnails so they give me more room to experiment within the format.
this is a great way to improve your painting and drawing. It is not about accurate shapes so much as it is about design on a 2 dimensional surface,
Thanks Andi for inadvertently leaving your book behind - I love new art books.

These next 2  are the same drawing at different stages. After watching Cluny's demonstration, I decided to work on this drawing a bit more

 Evans farm 1 ( 5 x 10 inches)

 Evans farm 2 (5 x 10 inches)
 I added a lot more value and detail and used a blending pen to do some of the shading. I had never seen these pens before and they give some interesting results. I think the pen has a mixture of glycerin and rubbing alcohol in it. It makes the graphite act like water soluble pencil. It also "fixes" the graphite so you can't erase but you can add more on top. Thanks for the pens Sheila.

Here are 4 more just for fun - Happy drawing everyone

 Pine (7 x 10 inches)

 Aylesford Farm (7 x 10 inches)

 Stone barn (6 x 10 inches)

2hr parking (7 x 8 inches)

The Eyes Have It

 As part of my own drawing practice I have been working on facial features - the eyes.

 I have drawn pages of eyes

 and more pages of eyes

Here's looking at you