Fun With Inks

I've definitely felt more inspired to create art through traditional mediums than digital lately (obviously the bulk of any digital piece has been hand drawn first, anyway). It's a tricky time at the moment to know what is best to progress with in terms of anything creative...

Which reminds me, those who take a look at my blog, could you please vote in my poll on the right-hand side? I want to do a bit of everything really, but I'd like to know what others think. Thank you.

Also, I've joined LinkedIn now.

Once in a while I remember what sorts of arts and crafts materials I have. I do like these random spurts of inspiration to draw and be more experimental; now if only I could get them more often! I've drawn lots of novel/book illustration styled pieces lately that shall be posted soon here or on another portfolio.

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Right now, here's some, for fun, quick ink pictures, inspired from some of my photographs.

I had intended to use black ink, but in truth I could not actually unscrew the lid off the pot. I think brown has done quite nicely as an alternative. The first is loosely Clifford's Tower in York; the second is, also loosely, one of my cats who seems to be wearing an eye-patch.

Looking at some aquarium photos of mine I decided to bring out the other colours. But not red for some reason. Nor blue, but that's just because that lid would not unscrew, either. 

The very common I'm sure 'I have one more sheet left from this pile and I've ran out of photographs in this particular album and my interest is beginning to wane' dilemma. But I managed to get something down without it looking really obviously a product of the aforementioned. This alligator is unimpressed with something or other.
 

I hope you (quite) liked seeing more traditional experiments (; because there will be more).

Life Drawing Final

That was certainly a beneficial life drawing course. It was good to be stretched to use artist materials I usually might shy away from to see what I can actually achieve with them. Also just to look closer at the model and think about ways to approach them that I hadn't touched upon so much before. I'm a bit reluctant to go back to sitting down, just drawing in a little sketchbook with pen and pencils now... but we'll see what I can find next.

Week 9 - Oil Pastels

I was sceptical of using these pastels after some rubbish attempts a few years back, but actually I didn't find them that bad to work in!

In this picture the page was halved and we could only draw half the model. We then turn the paper over to do the next half, meaning we had to try and remember where we drew the other parts (which could test how accurate we were being with measuring). Mine almost looks like she has two heads; she's certainly fatter here.







Week 10 - Moving and Wash

There's probably a bit of repetition with images in the next few images. The model walked around and we had to draw his poses fast.







Quick sitting down and getting up poses.







Finally, we used a pencil and ink brush that could be dipped in blackened water, as well as a wax crayon. The once black water dried quite a lot, unfortunately, so I'm left with the wrinkles!



I hope those who looked, found these artier life drawings of interest!

What shall I put up next? Watch this (blog) space.

More Lifeus Drawingus

Week 3 - Ink

In my experience of using ink, I've always felt I become somewhat clumsy and confused (depending on the weapon with which to ink). So with the usual frustration was also added the holding of the 'weapon' by its tip. But here's my attempts from the class:

Okay, so this was actually charcoal on a long stick, holding at its tip. I keep making my drawings too big so the feet can't be seen - need to work on that.

I never truly 'got' how to hold a fountain pen properly. Add a sort of large version of one, set upon an easel, again holding the thing at the tip (and trembling), and frustration occurs. Unfortunately the ink decided to give up on me altogether on these!

Mercifully, the brush wasn't quite so difficult to go places with. But not hugely satisying either here.

Brush again, I actually quite like this one.

Week 4 - Pastels

I haven't used pastels in a long time. Like the week before, I feel I can get more messy then necessarily nice outcomes with the material. But it is good to try out and improve on these things!

Rather firey, I didn't realise I should probably have added more colours in.

However, I began to take this on board.

Still six weeks to go!