art

2025 – a Retrospective

Stuart3 Comments

Looking at where I am currently, I want to leave a few notes for going forward into 2026.

Short list:

  • Colour: beware, use it cautiously
  • Anatomy: now ready to study, practice and experiment
  • Drawing: tending to realistic and less comical
  • Drawing from imagination: ok, but not too long and allow refences
  • Size: work bigger and occasionally work even bigger
  • Tools: pencil, grey fine liners, pale watercolurs, coloured pencils
  • Where:
    • at home: draw/study from books and postcards
    • at home: draw portraits again
    • in museums: draw from plaster casts and portraits
    • woods: draw nature (gesture, shape, form and texture)

At the end of 2024, I attempted to build up a feeling of expectation and a little pressure for me to continue with the drawing of small fantasy figures from the top of my head. It didn’t work out the way I had expected. Once the first excitement had passed, i.e. the joy of seeing that I could just invent a character on paper, I was let down by the experience of seeing myself make the same mistakes and not get the results I had intended. Looking at them now, with sufficient emotional distance to them, I think they are funny but when creating them I’m trying to achieve something more polished and with a greater “wow”-effect.

To achieve a greater level of proficiency in my drawings I will approach things differently this year. First of all, I think my figures will be drawn bigger than postcard size. I will accept the fact that I can use photo reference to influence and create a first draft for the drawing. I will create photo references myself.

When I reach a point where I’m not sure about the anatomy, I will crack open my anatomy books and make drawings of the difficult or confusing part (to be honest, I’m going to have to do that a lot). The order in which I intend to do this is important. Instead of studying and then drawing, I will start my drawing and then pause to study the parts I’m having difficulty with.

I’m going to use and refine my knowledge of perspective, shape and form. I will study the Great Masters (especially Renaissance), but I will not just copy, I will look for their usage of angles, overlaps, shapes, juxtapositioning and gesture.

The following 6 drawings were created during a 5 day workshop I took part in. We used dolls, photocopies of figures and anatomy charts. Additionally, the teacher came and corrected a few minor things, things I had been doing wrong all along.

My Plan for 2024

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Going into the New Year (2024), I have been looking back on what I created and enjoyed creating in 2023. At the end of this post, you can find a gallery of drawings which I currently plan to use as flags and signposts, to keep me on track, but also push me further.

Looking back at some sketches I made and ideas I had, I’m convinced again, that I want to attempt a few (colourful) illustrations from imagination, based on scenes/pictures that have popped into my head. This is a challenging activity and exhausting, but I eventually enjoy the results tremendously.

Last year, I identified two major influences I want to focus on: the artist Sempe (or Franco-Belgian comic illustrators in general) and the German expressionists from the beginning of the 20th century.

Do not do: still life is boring for me, and I will continue to avoid it. And I will not drink and draw.

Study: shapes and especially sub-shapes (which I haven’t completely unlocked the mystery of yet) shall be on the top of my list.

I will enjoy the act of drawing.

Tools to use: always use tools I enjoy using, which is a black, waterproof felt-tip pen, but also watercolour with a waterbrush. Colourful brush pens are nearly as exciting. Colour pencils are still valid for a portrait or for brushing over the dry, rough surface of a finished water colour drawing. Pencils are a good start for a drawing or when in study mode.

Fountain pens are good for writing, I should not waste my time and energy drawing with them, unless absolutely necessary (e.g. nothing else available).

Don’t hesitate to return to an older drawing, they are not finished until I say so. Add more colour, more contrast, clean it up. Study what I like and what I don’t like about them.

Use early morning gesture drawing or quick sketching to challenge yourself:
– look at the reference photo for a few seconds (shapes, rhythms, idea/story)
– look at something else (book, “stuff”, anything but the reference)
– draw a quick sketch (in pencil and pen), not a copy, the drawing should be based on the idea/story
– repeat 5 or 6 times
– return to the references and without copying address any issues (spend as much time as feels comfortable to you)

Urban sketching, i.e. sketching in public:
– go to places that interest me (places you have a connection)
– sit on benches, curbs, walls, steps (have your inflatable cushion with you)
– draw people, draw their hands, draw people interacting
– do not think you have to sit in cafes all the time
– focus on one motif, use a double spread of the A5 sketchbook
– don’t attempt to capture too much (houses can be backgrounds, use shapes and soft edges)
– sketch a thumbnail in the corner, to keep focused
– enjoy, but keep details to a minimum
– add writing with local, historical data, sometimes

Test colour combinations on pages in sketchbook, make notes on my thoughts about them. Remember I like blues and greens, use them!

Stuart, these are some of our favourite creations of 2023, they include the capturing of depth and space, using shape to represent surface anatomy, identifying focuspoints, using contrast, using colour, telling a story, and drawing figures from the top of our head.

Let’s keep on rolling

StuartLeave a comment

Yep, it’s been a while … but I haven’t stopped drawing.

Life drawing is back on the menu, I go to weekly life drawing sessions and have started teaching at an evening session again — 9 times each semester.

Urban Sketching in cafés is still my thing, I love the clutter, the people, the contact with real people and the anxiety of perhaps being “caught at it”.

This semester, I attended a weekly drawing class, where I started to switch to watercolours and then eventually moved back to my felt tip brushpens.

Here are a few galleries of what I’ve been up to lately. These are galleries, which you can activate by clicking on a pic and then move around the pictures with the cursor, like on a carousel. To exit, just press the “Esc” button.

So, here are the life drawing sessions, one evening, one page 🙂

Then we have urban sketching in cafés and a few stuffed birds at the museum. And then some of my fellow attendees at the drawing class I was going to.

Finally, we have … a portrait I painted/drew, while at a drawing event in a fellow artist’s kitchen, and two more exercises from the drawing class I was going to.