Highlights from Sketchbook 22

This is my 22nd sketchbook which I am showing highlights of. This book, as well as several others including Highlights from Sketchbook 21, began the experiment with watered down acrylics. That has had some rather interesting results. Also, there are some of my first watercolours and manga studies.

Girl Against Wall

Sometimes it can be fun to draw a bunch of random sketches in whatever fashion they come to me. I used to do that a lot more than I do that now, and I don't often do that with paints. I particularly like the beginnings of the green horse at the bottom.

Girl in Red Shadow

"Girl in Red Shadow" is just one of many in which I continue to try to create highlights through contrasting colours.

Girl Leans Against Tree

"Girl Leans Against a Tree" I really like. It is watered down acrylics. I really like the exciting colours in which the subject is painted. The oranges really come alive. Also, I enjoyed playing with the natural background.

Three Girls

"Three Girls" is another of my watered down acrylics. I kind of like this one.

One of the more difficult things for me to accomplish is spatial proximity between multiple subjects.  Though this makes no attempt at a naturalist painting, I was somewhat pleased with it.

Robots

 

"Robots" is another painting using watered down acrylics.

I like to play with robots at times. the basic shapes and three dimensional play which one might engage in can be a lot of fun.

Girl by Rope

"Girl by rope" is a watered down acrylic.

I am relatively happy with the contrast in this image. Also, I seem to be getting the hang of lips from a 3/4 view. Her right breast, however, leaves something to be desired.

Writer's Block

I always enjoy doing these Writer's Block cartoons. It was only in the last month that I decided to start trying to colouring them.

Catgirl 1

Manga "Catgirl 1" is an attempt at a catwoman. This drawing comes from my studies of the book How to Draw Anime For Beginner by Le Trung.

It has been about 18 months since I first began this concentrated effort to improve my hand at both sketch and colour. Slowly I seem to be getting the hang of it. Though, I don't know if it will ever bring a monetary reward, it certainly has a healthy appetite. Hopefully this year I can write a book and illustrate it personally.

New Year's Resolutions

Writer's Block's New Year's Resolution

This image is based on Illustration Friday's challenge which included the word 'resolution.'

A long time ago I figured out that New Year's Resolutions are actually a procrastinator's excuse: whatever it is I want or must do, I will do after New Year's. As it turns out, it just puts off what one can do today for that date. And so often, we fail when that date comes, and very often after very little time.

Hence, this "Writer's Block" cartoon depicts how easy it is to make a resolution, and how difficult it can be to carry it out.

I think this is the first episode where Froglim makes his debut.

Writer's Block - Finding Balance

Latest in my "Writer's Block" series.

This post is based on Creative Challenge number 133. The challenge was to come up with something involving the word, 'balance.' This is what I came up with.

Finding balance between the art of writing and living is a difficult one to maintain. It seems to me that major shakeups in a life can stop a good project dead in its tracks. Take for instance last year when I went back to my mother's home for a visit. I simply lost control of the project and I never wrote another word.

While at work I was writing in my notebooks every day. I drew fairly close to the completion of a novel called, "Northern Lights: Medical Emergency." When I got to my mother's home, it completely upset this rhythm. I'm still struggling to find it. Though, at the very least, this week I began constructing the final setting for the finale of my book.

In any case, the image I painted is supposed to indicate the difficulty in writing and maintaining the balance of life, while the consequences of losing that balance are borne not only by the writer, but the writer's family: in my case, my wife.

Winter and Nature - Illustration Friday

This picture was made using watered down acrylics on croquis paper. This is my creative response to the topic of 'winter' issued by Illustration Friday.

Pregnant Nature is looking at Old Man Winter, waiting for him to get tired and sit down so that she can give birth to Spring.

While Old Man Winter holds a staff of cold, Nature is holding a staff in the form of a tree which has a number of buds ready to blossom and two swallows on its branches.

Black & White: Creative Challenge 131

This post is my contribution to Creative Challenge 131.

The challenge was to post a work of art in black and white. So, these are the best images I came up with in the spirit of the challenge. All images are watered down acrylics (black and white obviously) on sketch books.

The first batch that I did I simply lathered some quick strokes of black paint in the middle. Then I tried to find the image in some of them. This was one of those, and by far my favourite.

 This is the other that I like quite a bit. This is the other good one where I was able to find the image in the random swathing of black paint. That's why the face is further down and partly cut off.

I recently read in The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed, and he really hammered away the idea of how confining and unforgiving those four borders are on a given rectangle. I think this painting may have suffered for it.

This last one is a self portrait. I did two of them, and this one is not entirely accurate. I am not one of those painters with the skill to make a photographic quality painting. I can live with that, though.

Highlights from Sketchbook 21

Intro

I finished off my 21st sketchbook this morning and thought I would post my favourites from it.

Something that's relatively new that I started in sketchbooks started when this was started, I have many that are usually in use since I began this practice, is watered down acrylics. Also, there is at least one watercolour in here.


Awhile back I got it in my head to do a couple of ballet dancers for my dear friend, Sean Winston, who is both a fan and a contributor to the fine art of ballet. However, I was having difficulty, and decided to break down the limbs of the dancers into more basic three dimensional figures. This is one of the results, and, perhaps, amongst my favourite results.

This is another watered down acrylic. I had borrowed a book from the DICC, which is a facility for foreigners in Daejeon, South Korea.

The book was on the history of art in China. Many of the samples were very beautiful. There is a calm beauty that I find very alluring in much of Chinese art.

The elegance of the lady on one particular page struck me as being particularly beautiful. Many attempts were made to capture the magic of that image. Of those attempts in this sketchbook, this one was clearly the best.

This is watered down acrylic. I cannot recall who the model was for this one. Sometimes random images come into my mind as I try to work on one particular aspect of painting. I cannot recall what in particular I was striving for in this painting. However, I like the colour and feeling in this painting.

It's paintings like these that I really like. The image I embedded on the page I tried to reapply to canvas with limited success. I really like this one.

She is a character in an unwritten story. She is warning the main character not to eat the lieberries. Though she is a scary and mean looking witch, her intention is to help the girl. The girl, however, is young and foolish and not interested in the wisdom or opinion of scary witches. She eats of the lieberries and is struck by their curse of never being able to tell the truth and always lying.

It is my hope that in the not too distant future I will be able to illustrate my own children's books.

This is amongst the first watercolour images that I've done. It is very simply flowers blowing in a gentle wind. While it is certainly no masterpiece, I actually quite like this piece.

A friend of mine, Ronald Dandy, told me that one cannot layer watercolours as one does with acrylics. That certainly adds a level of difficulty for me. However, the colours are very bright and have some interesting characteristics. For instance, a dried up palette of watercolours can be used again simply by spraying it with water. That's pretty cool.

This is one of those sketches that is pretty much where I'd like to see my art go, but more reliably. It's that place of fearlessness where thoughts and images come out of my hand with little if any inhibition, and end up looking much like I wanted them to.

The girl on the small bed is no one in particular. The room is no room at all, just one randomly selected from nowhere.

This sketch is of three girls in a locker room in their glorious naked skin. I really like this sketch. Normally I have a very difficult time with proportions and mixing multiple individuals in the same image. However, in this case, it worked out fairly well. I am quite happy with this piece.

This is a self portrait. In it I look older and my face is slimmer than it is in real life.

The image also reminds me of my deceased grandfather, Ferna. Though he was not my grandfather by blood, he is the only one I've known. The biological one having died when my mother was very young, leaving behind no image, there is no way to know what my biological grandfather looked like.

And that ends the highlights of my 21st sketchbook.

Primitive Man - Illustration Friday

Caveman Paintings

After some searching, I found what's new to me the website called Illustration Friday. The topic for the week is "Primitive Art". With that topic in mind, I put together several 'primitive' pieces and these three posts are the 'best of' what I came up with.

These are all watered down acrylics on one of my croquis sketchbooks. I used burnt sienna, magenta, and yellow ochre as my colours.

I can't help but wonder of the genius that inspired the very first artist to pick up the 'brush' or perhaps tufted tail of some slain beast dipped in blood. But whatever of it, it is hard to contemplate the importance of that individual.

War Party

There's no party like a war party. The passion of life and death on the blunt or sharp end I'd wager was what inspired early paintings on the cave walls.

I don't know precisely what weapons the cavemen would have wielded, but surely clubs and spears were the technologies of the day.

Pigment to My Love

I don't know how primitive lovers might have painted their mistresses. Did they paint them on cave walls, or were those reserved for the bloodier deeds?

Perhaps this would have been the primitive 'Helen' for whom a thousand club wielding cavemen would have fought.

Holy Cow

Perhaps it was a bunch of hungry cavemen who sat in a cave who painted the bovine to help inspire them to the hunt.

Primitive Farewell

Well, that's the end of my contribution to primitive art.