Back to Art

I'd been neglecting drawing of late, but a few weeks ago my friends in Seattle (Tina, Nicole, and Michelle) decided to try something new -- getting together to draw via Zoom (the video chat platform).  The idea was to share a photo and all draw from it for one hour, and then share.

This got me back in the mood to draw, and now I'm busy with all sorts of artistic projects.  Yay!

For our first session, we drew a tree branch, which I wound up painting a bit too dark overall:

The next meeting, we did this stone lantern from a Japanese garden.  I got the perspective wonky, but I like it anyway.

Then we switched to portraits, choosing this random fellow, who had a lot of character:

At our most recent session, we sketched a taxidermy rhino from a natural history museum.  I really like this one -- I used a water-soluble brown ink pen, and then added some water to create the shading.

Next, I decided to do more people, because I wanted to do some portraits of my current favorite characters -- Aziraphale and Crowley, from "Good Omens", a six-part miniseries (Amazon Prime, also out on DVD) based on a 1990 novel (Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett) which is one of my favorite books. 

I started with Crowley (played by David Tennant), and my people drawing skills were a tad rusty at first as I tried to remember the basic facial proportions:

Next, I tried focusing on light-dark values:

And after a few more attempts which went into the trash, I managed to do a portrait of the character which I was happy with:

Next up was Aziraphale (played by Michael Sheen), and again, things started off a tad shakily:

And the value study wasn't much better:

Again, after several botched efforts, I got something a lot closer to what he actually looks like, although it got shaded too darkly due to a misguided notion to try ink over pencil, which didn't work.  Oh, well. 

Yesterday, I tried him using color -- I did a light watercolor wash over everything, and then put in all of the details using colored pencil:

I'm quite pleased with how this turned out. 

So that's my art update.  Now for the important stuff -- the Hounds!

It's been in the 70s lately, with plenty of sunshine.

Truman and Pippin love to run around their yard, and to roll around on the grass.

Happy Monday, and stay safe out there!