Sometimes It's Hard

What's Wrong with People These Days? (black fine liner, watercolor)

This is one of the works I'd rather forget. Everything went wrong with this one. Why are all the people so depressed!? Even the few ones that are laughing look a bit ill! I actually felt a bit ill myself when I showed this to my students. Well, it makes me laugh now so I guess it's maybe a good thing!

My idea was to try out different drawing techniques, because I'm still trying to find my own style. It was difficult to suddenly draw without a model and you can really see my struggle with this one. I want to say that this exercise got easier when I drew my first few faces, but no, it felt bad till the end! I just got used to the agonizing feeling I had every time I had to start a new face. The yellow color was meant to make this work happier, but it didn't work so well. Finally I added some purple to make it look more interesting.

Personal Pear Shoppers

Pears (ballpoint pen, black fine liner, watercolor)

One day I had some photography lessons and my students were supposed to create ideas for their photo shoots. However some of them felt a bit hungry and tired. They also saw me working with my sketchbook and wanted to do something with watercolor. I think that it's very important to photography students to practice their drawing and especially their seeing skills, so I gave them 10 euros and sent them to a local store to buy some fruits for us to draw and paint. As a price for their brisk shopping I told that they could also buy some cookies to get their energy levels up and lift their spirit.

When they came back they had bought ONE pear and lots of cookies, so it was very easy to pick the subject. We started to draw a pear. My first pear was too thin, so I made the other one wider. There wasn't much to draw because the pear was so colorful it was almost impossible to see any shades on it. But there sure was a lot to color. The pear was very spotted and splattering the color with a brush worked well in this case. I think that the smaller pear has more interesting colors on it although I don't know why I had to add some black fine liner to it afterwards. I think that was a big mistake. The wider pear looks better without the black lining. Finally, I added some yellow and red watercolor to the background and let it run different ways. This work was fun to make, it made me want to paint more!

Sweet Tooth

Sweet Dreams (black fine liner, watercolor)

The idea was to make a grid to your sketchbook and then fill it with variations of the same topic. My topic was desserts. Bad choice. Especially when I started to color these nightmares I think I started to drool. In Felix Scheinberger's book Urban Watercolor Sketching Scheinberger writes that adding color makes drawings look alive. He says that drawing tries to explain things and painting creates illusions. I agree, color really made all the sweets look more delicious.

I told my students that they have to fill two pages with this exercise. They were allowed to change topic for the other page and so was I. So there's more to come.

San Francisco on My Mind

Foggy Day (acrylic paint, pencil, black fine liner)

Today I used two postcards as a model and mixed those together with an earlier made background. When I painted the background it reminded me of fog and I knew that I wanted to draw something related to that theme. The foggiest place I've ever been to is San Francisco, so I decided to draw the Golden Gate. The lady is from another postcard from New York. The idea of mixing different photos together inspires me, so I might do it again soon. Also, I will keep making these backgrounds, because they give me the greatest ideas for sketches.

A Girl with Yellow Tears

A Girl with Yellow tears (pencil, watercolor)

I saw this photo in a photography magazine and wanted to draw it because of the interesting light and posture. The girl doesn't look the same as in the picture but I try not to worry about it. After all the point wasn't to make a perfect copy of the photo but to draw something from a model and to practise seeing different shades. The background was made earlier with watercolor and acrylic paint and I think it works pretty well with this work. I especially like the yellow "tear" on her cheek and the red splatters behind her. Makes you wonder what's going on behind that calm face.

Wrinkles on a Young Woman

Wrinkles (watercolor, acrylic paint, pencil, red fine liner)

This time we used the same pictures as last time. The point was to wrinkle the pictures and then draw them from different angles. It was difficult and you really had to concentrate on the lights and shades to make the drawing look crumbled like it was supposed to. I had this idea for an exercise from Pinterest and originally it was taken from Christiane Feser's crumbled work ( http://christianefeser.de/works/modelle/ ). I think this exercise might have been too difficult, but still it was a good practice for studying the model.

This Girl is on Fire

Girl on Fire (acrylic paint, charcoal pencil)

Last week we drew portraits from pictures. I chose this picture of a woman because of the interesting angle it has. I had made this Background earlier with acrylic paint and watercolor so the page didn't seem so empty when I started to draw. This drawing was made with charcoal pencil so I had to use some fixative for preventing smudging. The charcoal pencil is really nice to draw with because it's more accurate and doesn't make ass much mess as traditional charcoal. I think that the end result looks like a woman who is standing in the flames and watching you. That's something I didn't plan at all. Aren't surprises great?