Variety of Tulips

A friend and I recently decided to do an art swap. She makes beautiful crochet blankets and she said she would make one for me in in exchange for a painting of tulips.  Good deal! She likes red ones, so I bought a bouquet of red tulips and took several reference photos for her painting (which I'm doing in watercolor). 

I had two other commissions I was working on though, before I was able to start her painting.  By the time they were finished, the red tulips had died, but I really had wanted to practice some more drawing straight from life, so I bought another bouquet of multicolored tulips for sketching (and decorative purposes, of course!).  

Here are my life drawings of tulips.  

I just bought myself a little Moleskine watercolor journal and I was so excited to start painting in it. This is my first entry.

Quick pen and ink sketches. This sketch and the one below were both done in my 5"x7" sketchbook.

Getting detailed in pencil. 

The tulips were starting to wilt and die, and I always find drawing wilting flowers a good exercise. This one is a bit larger, done in my 9"x12" sketchbook.

These ones were really falling apart! 9"x12".

Sketching Outside

So the sun was out this morning (finally!) and I couldn't wait to get outside to draw that little park! (I posted the photo in yesterday's blog).  I had some things to do this morning, then I came home for lunch and went right outside, and of course, that's when the clouds rolled in to stay. *sigh*. I really wanted the sun because it casts more shadows, which of course add nice contrast.  I'm not sure how long these gorgeous trees stay in bloom like this. That and the serious lack of sun in this country made this sketch pretty time sensitive.

When I walked outside into that sunshine, it was so warm and made me so happy.  I was outside for a good hour or so, when I noticed my hands were getting cold and it was a bit windy. Grr, Scotland...

Well, at least I did it. I went outside, into a public park and did some art.  No one bothered me, if anyone was looking over my shoulder I didn't  notice, so besides the clouds, an overall success!  I didn't do the whole thing outside.  When I realized the sun was not coming back and my hands were cold, I went inside to finish painting from the photo I took the other day. 

I really love these trees, I wish they would stay this pink and flowery all spring and summer.  It's so nice to look out my window and see so much color. 

Drawing From Life

I've been thinking that I need to draw more from life.  My usual MO is to take a lot of photos and pick one or a few as reference and draw and paint from that.  I especially never wanted to do much "en plein air" work because, well, dragging art supplies from the studio to wherever was a pain, wind and rain are uncomfortable conditions to try and focus on drawing and the biggest reason, I am pretty introverted and like to be left alone while doing art.  Drawing outside draws people, who can potentially hover or even talk to you. To some of you, that might be fine and even welcome.  Not so much for me, it's distracting and I'm not in the mood to talk to strangers while I'm trying to work. 

These sketches are all done in my little 5"x7" sketchbook. 

My first recent attempt was drawing some flowers I had in my house, orange gerber daisies.  I didn't use any color, this was just pen and ink.  I placed them on my coffee table, put the tv on and just sketched away.  It's definitely more challenging than drawing from a photo, but I really enjoyed it and was happy with how it came out. 

 You'll probably notice "shadow dancing" written up in the corner.  Well, the show I was watching had that playing and I wrote it down because I like the song.  Don't hate me for liking the Bee Gees! haha. 

These next three drawings were done outside in my yard back home in New Jersey. I was just back for a few weeks visiting and there were flowers popping up all over our yard.  The weather was a bit bi-polar while I was home, some days hitting 80 degrees, another day there was snow. Go figure. But those gorgeous sunny days found me outside sketching flowers. This time I used some watercolor with my pen and ink. 

I really love these Daffodils my grandpa gave my mom. They come up in the little garden behind the kitchen. This day was pretty windy though, and it was hard to draw anything, since the flowers were all waving around like crazy! So I got one and called it a day.

Cannot remember what these flowers were called. My mom told me, but it was some weird name that I'm sure I can't spell. 

Now, I am back in Edinburgh and everything if flowering and blooming like crazy. It's absolutely gorgeous here!  

So far, baby steps. Sketched from life inside with some flowers I had in my window.  Then, I was outside at home in my yard sketching flowers where they grew.  Next step...going outside in public here in Edinburgh to a little park and sketching this...

 

I will post a photo when I finish!

Pen and Ink Art

So here's some older work, but some favorites.  I first heard of "stippling" when I was in high school.  Stippling is where you take a fine point pen and use dots for shading.  The first piece I ever did was the dragon from the movie "Dragonheart".  The assignment was to do a large scale project in pen and ink stippling and the theme was an animal.  I wasn't ever interested in animals as subjects for my art and wasn't overly happy about this theme.  I was into dragons at the time, so I asked my teacher if I could do a dragon, and she said as long as it was realistic and not too cartoon-ish.  She suggested the one from Dragonheart, so that's what I did. 

 For a first stippling project, I think it came out pretty well.  As a school assignment however, I  managed a C grade, only because I didn't finish it in time.  I had the face done, the most important part, but the neck part wasn't finished so my teacher had to give me a crappy grade because it was "incomplete".  I don't blame her and I know she didn't want to give me such a low grade, but it wasn't done.  It was almost the last project of the year so I had plenty of time to finish it over that summer and, as you can tell, I did.
When I was in college, I took an illustration class and pen and ink came up again. I did another project that used stippling and some other pen and ink techniques as well. This assignment was was to take something "organic" or natural and pair it with something man made.  I wanted to use dragons again, so I did this:

 

I'm sorry I don't have a better picture of this, I took this photo while it was in it's frame, trying to avoid reflections from the glass.  I don't have it with me now to take it out and get a better photo, unfortunately.  For this, I found the picture of the castle in a book of mine and the dragon is from a pair of candlesticks.  That dragon is wrapped around a candle stick so I just made him wrap himself around a tower instead. The dragon is all stippling but the castle is a mix of techniques, from hatching to just plain scribbling. I had a lot of fun with this one. 

After this semester was over, I decided I wanted to do more stippling projects over the summer and I decided to do some of the Titanic.  I've always been fascinated with the history of Titanic and had done some projects with it in the past.  Now I wanted to do something big and do it in stippling.  I actually had a series in mind of Titanic in stippling, from a picture of it being built, a picture of it sailing, a picture of it sinking and a picture of it as it looks today, rusting away under the sea.  I only managed that last one, because it took me the entire summer and I was a little burnt out afterwards! But I'm very happy with it:

 I forget the exact size of this, but it's cut down slightly from a 16x20" sheet of paper.  I used a 005 Micron pen for the ship (ridiculously fine point) and for the black background, a 01 Micron (only slightly less ridiculously fine point).  The background was very tedious, because it's just plain black.  The ship itself was a lot of fun to do.  I've wanted to enter this into contests, but I'm always worried about copyrights.  I did this from a picture from National Geographic, so it's not original. But again, no one can get an original photo of the Titanic, because of where it is.  I don't know if I could sell prints of it, either.  

Well I hope you enjoyed my pen and ink work.  More work to come soon!