What Now?

What now?  That is the question.  It has been nearly two years since my last update and almost as long since I last picked up a pencil or pen.  One of the things I have 'resolved' to do is to draw more this year.  That should be easy because I haven't been drawing at all!

So what does this resolution mean?  Well, I need to start drawing again.  I don't want to set my sights too high but I would like to complete one project per month worthy of posting here.  I plan to start by drawing something daily.  So time will tell if I can keep up with this goal.

My Jeep

For those of you who follow my other blogs I am sorry about the recurring theme. For those who are unaware I purchased a new Jeep at the end of March and it has really captured my imagination. It was only a matter of time before I had to draw it. This is the first of what I am sure will be many drawings of the Jeep. Here's hoping the inspiration spreads to other subjects.

This drawing was initially done with a black and a blue Sharpie pens. These are the new pens with the non-bleed through ink. Once the basic drawing was complete I filled in the black areas and added some grey using Faber-Castell big brush artist pens. The blue was filled in with Prismacolor Premier True Blue marker.

Rapidograph Pens

In my Drawing II class last year (wow, it has been a year) I had a chance to try out Rapidograph pens. These things are pretty cool but at the time I figured I would never own a set as they cost about $170 for the set like the one below or $33 for a single pen, ouch! Well, last weekend I was out with the family and we stopped in at our local Michael's craft store. I always checkout the art and drawing sections. As we were checking out I took a look at the security locker at the front of the store - the place where they keep the pricey stuff. Sure enough they had dozens of these pens sets but they were on clearance. I was able to get this set for $50! I have done a little experimenting with them so far. They are pretty amazing pens and the set goes from small to microscopic. The only drawback is that you must fill the pens for each use and clean them after each use. They say you can leave the ink in the pens for 2 weeks but with the dry AZ air I am sure they would not last that long. Cleaning them is a pain and can be very messy. I am hoping this may, however, get me back to doing some drawing. These things are cool.

Fun With Pen and Markers

Wow! It has been a while since I posted anything here. I have decided not to take another drawing class this Fall but I plan to keep working on improving my skills. A while back I was inspired to do some work with ink pens and markers. I pulled out some fishing gear with interesting shapes and colors. Here are the results.

This turned out to be a lot of fun to draw. I think I will continue to experiment with these materials.

Ink and Watercolor

Here are a few quick ink sketches from my small sketchbook. I have added some watercolors to these. I have always loved the look of watercolor and ink. This is a technique I will be doing more of.

Eyes

I am about half way through my Drawing II class and I have not posted anything! I have been very busy with work, school and life. Anyhow, here is my favorite project so far this semester. This is a modified version of the Eyes project from page 23 of the Keys to Drawing by Bert Dodson. In this exercise you just draw your eyes as you see them in a mirror. What we did was to draw our eyes first and then we drew the 5 examples eyes you see below. The we drew our eyes again so that we could evaluate our progress. I have eliminated my eyes from the drawing below as I was not happy with that part of the project, but I loved drawing the examples.

I made one small Photoshop edit to the last set. Seems my scanner bed was not clean and I had some lint on the image.

Random Thoughts...

I have started my Drawing II class and it is going well so far. I have the same instructor as I did for Drawing I but the format of the class is less structured. We will have lots of opportunity for self driven work and it should be very interesting.

One of the things we have to do is maintain a small sketchbook that we just add to throughout the term. There is no set number of drawings and no specific subject matter required. Carrying a sketchbook seems to be a fairly standard practice among artists but for me it is a new experience. I have a bit of a block when it comes to selecting a subject for a drawing. It is strange as I have seen others do amazing work with items that i would never have though to draw. I know it is the drawing and not the subject that makes the drawing interesting but I still have some commitment issues.

I am trying to find new ways of getting my art onto the blog. So far I have just taken digital pictures from my sketchbook but the picture quality has been poor. I will be trying some different ideas for the next few posts to see how they look.

I have come to love using Post-it notes for sketching out ideas for larger works. This is an idea I got from a Doug Chang book and at first I did not give it much thought. For my class I am working on a surrealist landscape project and the Post-it notes allow me to burn through tons of ideas very quickly. An on top of that they are cheap.