Ok, last day of this kourse, but I still sat down now (9 pm) and last night to fling some paint onto those watercolour sheets. It’s getting hard to find still life objects … I thought! These have all been drawn using a Lamy Safari “F” nib with water soluble, royal blue ink. The lines are continuous-contours. There’s just a break for the ring and the book. These were really great exercises and I’ll try to keep up with them.
Into the 3rd week of “Seeing” at SBS (http://sketchbookschool.com), my second kourse there. Watercolouring over water soluble continuous contour lines.
This is the latest painting (Tuesday night) (about 10 minutes), going with the flow:
This was Sunday night (the date is wrong on the pic) (20 minutes), keeping those whites free, letting the paint roll:
Sunday morning (30 minutes) … very exact … using glazing, letting things dry:
Saturday night (artificial light), seemed messy to me, but now it’s one of my favourites, the shading, the messiness, I’m sorry, I think it’s gorgeous:
Ok, before I overload the previous blog post, here are the collected results of another week at SketchBookSkool (join it!). This is the second week of the “Seeing” Klass with Koosje as teacher. We are all making selfies. And as I am currently working with Alphonso Dunn’s “Pen & Ink Drawing (a simple guide)” (buy it!) … most of my results are in … pen & ink.
Ed got me going with this one … I enjoy seeing his results and the progress he is making with his toolset (https://mostlydrawing.com). Every now and again, he will upload a bunch of self-portraits. Now I’ve got into the habit of drawing, painting, sketching myself once or twice a week too. Here are the results.
I’m using different sketch books and scrap paper. I use different tools in no specifc order they are
The Lamy is great for on-the-go, I use it to jot down anything (e.g. telephone numbers) or sketch people. At home, I switch to biros or Pitt pens. It’s then nice and relaxing to use the dry colour tools (wax crayons, Polychromos or Abrecht-Dürer), but if I want something really demanding with the chance of achieving a sense of success (no, scratch that, it is always worthwhile), well, then I’ll get out the dip pen, Dirk Weber ink and Horadam watercolours, not to forget the Da Vinci Kolinsky brush. That reminds me, it’s time to spend a few hours with those lovely tools again and “ruin” a few pages of watercolour paper.
Or, “How much can you sketch in 1 week?”
I was on Lanzarote in Costa Teguise for 9 days and took along 4 sketch books.
I used 3.
I had a travelers’ pack of watercolours (12), a mixed hair paint brush, waterbrush, colour pencils, biro, Derwent Graphik Line Maker 0.1.
And I drew and drew and drew.
Stuart: Oh, look we have two models tonight!
Torsten: No, she made a mistake, it’s ok, she’s going now.
Female Model: Hi!
Stuart: Hi, Female Model! Great, two models tonight!
Female Model: Yeah, I don’t mind. But it’s too expensive.
Stuart: Well, if it’s only about the money … we have enough.
[Stuart approaches Torsten again]
Stuart: She’s willing to stay. We can afford it, can’t we?!
Torsten: Hmm, but some of our artists already have enough on their plate with one model.
[3 minutes later, Female Model is undressed on the little stage]
Stuart: Hey, Female Model, you can thank me for this!
Female Model: Yeah, you can call the poses!
Oh, I love my Life Drawing Classes, but tonight was my last one for months. I haven’t registered for the next course, because SBS and “daily” gesture sketching is taking up enough of my precious time.
But here are the results of tonight’s “brace of models” and also a sneak peek into my second week at SBS.
So, what’s this with the paper … looks like a calendar. Yes, it is a half price Moleskine weekly calendar. I wanted something that feels and looks great, but is not too “precious” and can still, just about take watercolours (it was still expensive, for half price: 10€) .
One last pic tonight in a small, absolutely lovely Moleskine watercolour booklet (10 minutes):
OK, this is the stuff I took to Life Drawing Class tonight:
Oh, look, there’s even a picture of me in there.
Now to SBS. Well, I am absolutely blown away. I can’t believe how much of my hidden creative seam has been mined in these 12 days.
I’ll just give you something of mine to look at from this last Klass with Jill Weber … it’s all about telling stories and making books.
Well, the first week of SketchBookSkool (SBS) is well underway.
I’m very impressed with the channels of creativity it has already allowed me to explore. The videos are short, but wow!, they are incredible. I’ve had a sneek peak of Felix Scheinberger painting a little comical bird in 3 minutes with a water brush (and lighter!/Feuerzeug). I’ve been hand-lettering (thanks to Koosje’s lessons) at work during meetings.
I just sat down and did this (hey, why am I doing all that gesture drawing practice anyway?):
Tools in use:
Since the course started on Friday, I sketched all of this:
I’m waiting for my first ever Kurs to start over at sketchbookskool.com and I’m starting to get itchy and want to be kreative for a change. So why not draw a komic strip of myself waiting for my first ever Kurs to start over at sketchbookskool.com.
I took some quick photos and decided pretty quickly on the panel setup I wanted for the comic strip. I needed a few minutes to calculate and draw the panels’ frames, loaded the photos onto the PS3 (at least one thing it’s good for) and displayed them on the TV. 3 hours later, non-stop working, quick pencil pre-sketching (B lead) and making final marks with marker (Derwent 0.1) we have this result (DINA3, 190 gr/sqm).
(I believe, I have never done anything like this before.)
We had our last Life Class evening for 2015 yesterday.
And I’m taking the opportunity here to look back a few months at some comparable Life Class results.
Most of these are fountain pen drawings. I have really fallen in love with drawing with a fountain pen and I notice my progress, coming from scratchy lines and moving on to more convincing, clean and especially more decisive lines.
Here is last nights result and then the order is from oldest to latest drawings.
The following drawings start in August 2015 and represent my Life Drawings progress of the last 4 months.
Carla: Stuart, Torsten isn’t coming today. Go get the stuff. Here’s the key.
[Stuart goes and gets the stuff]
Model:Ok, then. What would you like?
Stuart: (being as he got the stuff and also has a big mouth) OK, we’ll start with 3 times 5 minutes to warm up …
[and so the evening begins, with a new “Master Of Life” … me, me, me]
[Two of my fountain pens ran dry while drawing tonight. A3, 190g paper.]
Carla: Stuart, take the key back to the restaurant and put the chain across the parking area.
[Ok, I must admit, Carla had her hand bandaged and I still have a big mouth.]
Don’t forget to check out my gestures.
Stuartdraws 