My Weekly Themed Sketch and Other Art Works

I vote for the bears! :) That's a more fun sample to look at.

Once I started playing with the oil pastels, I had so many different shades of color to keep track of it was difficult to make any decisions. That was a new problem for me, as I never had an issue with deciding what photo oils to use - it just came easily to me, I guess. Oil pastels leave me baffled half the time.

Anyway, I eventually made a sample page, too - trying to keep all the reds, blues, etc., on one 9x12 sheet. A line, a block of color from light to heavy, with the name underneath it. I put each sheet in a loose photo album with a cellophane sheet cover and tied the album pages together with yarn for a little book. It's been extremely helpful to look at before just grabbing a random shade.

The bear it will be. This is the third or fourth iteration of Clyde.

I make a small sample sheet for the acrylics, watercolors and pencils. I'm not as detailed with the value range - I just make 1" x 1" squares with the color name.
 
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So Gary has Frankenstein's la-bor-a-tory handy, huh?
 
Thanks Charlie I'll take a look.

I've heard nuns used to be rather strict...

 
Poison: Lamy Safari fountain pen (it looks like a medium point), Lamy blue ink.


Poison
by Charlie Wrenn, on Flickr
 
Going back over some of the older posts and I remember another exercise from the early classroom days: paint (or draw) a photograph that has been projected against the wall (film days), unfocused. You get no details, only blobs of color and value (light/dark). Draw what you see. In the digital world, unless you have a projector, I guess you can just shoot a photo that's out-of-focus to the point you can't tell what the subject is.
 
Going back over some of the older posts and I remember another exercise from the early classroom days: paint (or draw) a photograph that has been projected against the wall (film days), unfocused. You get no details, only blobs of color and value (light/dark). Draw what you see. In the digital world, unless you have a projector, I guess you can just shoot a photo that's out-of-focus to the point you can't tell what the subject is.

Hmmm...I have no problem doing that:sorrow:
 
Interesting! I think I've said before that ink scares me because it's such a permanent type of medium, and I'm the type of chicken-sh!t artist that likes to be able to clean up mistakes. :1247: You make it look easy.

I have gotten better with the oil pastels, though - they scared me to death when I first started because, like ink, they are not easy to change once the mark is made.
 
Get a cheap set of markers - not Sharpies, as they bleed through everything. Lightly outline a scene in pencil (I like 2H or 4H), then retrace the pencil lines with marker. Now make diagonal hatchings and cross-hatchings for the shadows. Hit the pencil (if you can see any) with a gum eraser once the marker dries, and you have an ink sketch. Only want to use one marker, pick a color you like - it doesn't matter.

After a couple of those, try some basic shapes with just the marker - circles, squares, cubes, triangles, pyramids. Again, use cross hatching or lots of points/dots (see my measuring cup a few pages back) for the shading.

Eventually, you might want to expand and try washes. Get a bottle of India ink and one of the Speedball dip-pen kits - a holder and a couple nibs (there's one geared toward cartooning that's decent). Add a general purpose watercolor brush, like a #4 round, and you're good to go. India ink will be pretty waterproof when it's dry so you can layer washes without screwing up previous work.
 
Wow. Such knowledge! I'm likely to remain your admirer than to take up working with this medium anytime soon, though. I've only recently turned a corner with the oil pastels, and still have a looong way to go before feeling I have a strong handle on them. It hasn't been a year yet!
 

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