Drawing Journey Part23 - Jug

This exercise was far the best one yet!

At the beginning I had to prepare a tonal ground for my drawing which just meant starting to draw on grey surface instead if white one. Later on I discovered it was more about erasing than using a pencil and I truly loved it.

To make a tonal ground I sprinkled graphite shavings onto the paper and then smudged them to create a smooth middle grey/natural grey tone. A clutch pencils are brilliant for making graphite dust as there is no wood from pencil shaft to contaminate it.

When that was done I started with rough sketch of a jug which could be found on Will Kemp website or click HERE. He used a picture of pomegranate in his course however I liked the jug better.

Then I was adding shadows with soft pencil where it was need and for highlights I used an eraser.

Because I started with already mid-tones placed on the paper I found it very easy to either go darker for shadows or lighter for highlights using the eraser opposite to drawing and shading from the scratch on white card.

Hope you like it as much as I do :)

See you next time and have a great Day

Drawing Journey Part22 - Upside-Down-Puzzle 2

I found Will Kemp Foundations of Drawing course on Lynda.com which seemed to be like a great way how to develop my drawing skill further and because I used the Free Trial offer I had nothing to loose.

It reminded me a theory of the book Drawing on the right side of the brain which Faces/Vase exercise came from.

Back to Will’s course, the first exercise was about re-programming the brain to draw what it actually sees instead of what it thinks it sees.

This upside down puzzles was more sophisticated than the horse puzzle I’d done before. There was a picture included in the course which I printed it out. Following the instructions from the video section I covered the whole pic before I had a chance to see it. I uncovered a small portion, drew it, uncovered another portion and so on and I literally had no clue what it was going to be. after ¾ of drawing it finally hit me that it looked like a portrait.

It still surprises me how easy drawing can be if you flip your picture upside down and working on small section instead of the whole which could be very discouraging and scary if you’re lacking a “drawing confidence “ especially from beginning.

Next time tonal ground drawing so stay tuned :)

Have a great drawing day!

Drawing Journey Part21 - Cartooning Fun

After a strenuous task last time, shading the Kettle, I was left with literally no energy to make another lengthy project.

I was browsing on the net looking for some inspiration and I came across cartooning stuff which was exactly what I needed. Something nice, cute and easily done in few minutes.

I've bought a Christopher Hart book for kids ages 4 and up. First of all just because I found it cheap on Ebay and secondly because I still have an inner kid in me :)

The top picture is actually mine. I was trying to come up with something what would be completely my own and as I was on holiday with no other resources whatsoever this was an end result of my effort.

At this point I realized that the Kettle exercise was a last think I drew from DrawPj course. My conclusion is: course is great if you are a responsible student and if you stick with it you will learn a lot. 

Unfortunately, this doesn't apply to me as I go where I see something interesting. I must say that Student forum is truly amazing. I keep posting my artwork (Yes, I call it artwork now :) and support I get from the members there is brilliant. 

This includes nice comments as well as productive criticism mainly from Cindy (founder of DrawPJ) which I do appreciate. Example of this would be a pointing out that the perspective of the bench on the top picture doesn't really match my guy perspective which I'd never noticed until it was pointed out to me.

Moving on. I discovered another funky drawing course but more about it next time.

See you then & have a great day :)
 

Drawing Journey Part20 - Kettle

Week 3: Kettle

When I first saw what was on the agenda for this week I immediately thought " There is no way in a million years that I can do that"

So, I took a deep breath and started.

I had an outline to fill in and as the same as previous weeks some instruction how to accomplish this massive task, at least massive in my "student's"  head, were included.

Recommendation was not to spent more than 4 hours with it and  because I'm perfectionist and my credo is "If you do something do it properly " I spent more than 9 hours over few days. I did section by section from beginning to the end even though instruction were to do it as a whole and not in sections.

Very pleased with it and especially after I thought it was impossible it gave me the whole new level of confidence and first time since I'd started drawing I felt like an Artist.

This exercise was somehow a huge breakthrough for me and it did open the door to a new world of drawing perception (very hard to explain the feeling I have at the moment :)

Personal notes: a prolonged period of heavy concentration gives you a massive headache!!!

Discovery : Graphite is lifted up even though a fixative is used. I was working on this piece for a few days and covering it with some glassine paper to protect it between my drawing sessions. I noticed that over few days very dark areas, almost black, on Day 1 was middle grey on Day 3 and at the end I had to retouched picture quite significantly.

Looking forward to next project and until then Have a nice day :)

Drawing Journey Part19 - Shade and Form

So, I sort of finished Lesson 1 and I must admit that I was very excited to start Lesson 2 Shade and Form from DrawPj course.

Week 1:

The exercise for this week was all about to creating value scale and starting to recognize the slight differences between them. As much as it was beneficial I wanted to get into " a real shading" :)

Week 2: Cube, Sphere, Cone & Cylinder

I did love these exercises. I had an outlines to fill in with different values/tones. Instructions were broken down into few steps and some hints and tips were included as well. I mostly enjoyed a sphere and cone. 

Overall I found these exercises a little bit repetitive especially shading the cylinder as this one was a last practice and was not as a fun as previous ones. 

Looking at them all finished make me feel very proud of myself . I've had a REAL sense of satisfaction J

Personal note: I started to feel more comfortable and confident with drawing and shading. Looking for difference between various shades of grey started to be more automatic.

Next time is Week 3 Shading a Kettle so fingers crossed.

See You next time :)

Drawing Journey Part18 - Outline Drawing Summary

Week 3

I completely skipped the exercises for this week. It was a construction drawing of a  simple lamp with guidelines in place. For some reason I could not forced myself into drawing this and trust me I was trying so hard so many times. After I realized that I'd not drawn anything for over a week I just simply moved on to Week 4.

Week 4

This week was about Grid method for transferring an outline. Unfortunately week 3 repeated itself and I didn't do any exercises from this week either. Now I think it might be due to lack of my interest or appeal in a pictures provided in course materials.

Week 5

As you can guessed I skipped this one as well. To my surprise this was the same exercise of Old Hay Shed which I'd done already in 6 Pencil Techniques course few weeks back.

Week 6- 7

Outline drawing of Plumeria flower, this was a final project for the Unit 1 - Outline Drawing. I did not even attempt it and my plan is go directly to Unit 2-Shading and Form.


Happy Drawing :)


Personal Note: Please note this is my own personal experience and I know many people on drawpj forum who actually enjoyed themselves drawing these exercises. Information in course materials has it own value just pictures on their own did not work for me at all.

Drawing Journey Part17 - Chuk the Dog

Week 2 of DrawPJ course

Copy the shapes: very basic just copy as precisely as you can some basic shapes like a circle, ellipse, egg, pear, bean and moon or banana shape.

Frog Dog: this exercise had two steps.

Step One = following step by step instructions on how to create a construction drawing. I did not like construction drawing method at all. I spent far to much time on finishing this step just to find out that I needed to erase it afterwards.

Step Two = outline drawing and drawing personalization. I added a background and made some shading attempt. At the end I named my doggy Chuck. This part was much better and I had a fun - well deserved after frustrating step one.

See you next time :)

Drawing Journey Part16 - Upside Down Puzzle

I found this funky puzzle while browsing and searching for ultimate drawing book/resources. It came from Lee Hammond's Big Book of Drawing.

I started with making a copy using a copy machine and I cut out all individual squares - all together 70 squares. I also made a copy of the empty grid. Notice that each square in the grid is numbered - very important.

Using the elimination method, from simplest shape to complicated ones, I took one cut out square, found the corespondent number in empty grid and drew exact copy of it. I repeated it 69 times more and when I was done I turned it up side down.

End result was amazing. Under no circumstance I would be able to draw a horse like that but when it was broken down to the small chunks and turned up side down suddenly it all became possible.

Good news is, every single time when you filled stuck with your drawing just turn reference pic up side down, cover parts you don't need to see so you are not distracted and try again. I bet second attempt will be far far more satisfying then the first one.

See you next time :)


Note: I must say that in original filled grid some lines when aligned one by one didn't match however I tweak my end picture so they did.

Drawing Journey Part15 - Loose Curves

Moving on, I started the Outline Drawing course by Cindy Wider and these are first exercises in Week1.

Loose curves: the whole idea was about to be able to draw a curve using sketching strokes instead of few straight lines forming the curve. The given exercise was just something abstract however I chose to tweak it a little and I drew this Futuristic Dandelion instead. I must say I was pretty impressed with myself :)

Copy the pattern: main focus was on allocating points in a semi finished grid as precisely as possible and then joining them together forming lines and curve. Also it was a good practice on splitting lines in halves, quarters and so on.

I did some additional recommended Extra Practice for a different sizes of ellipses as they are apparently very important for drawing realistically.

Overall I am quiet pleased with the outcome and I am ready for exercise/-s in Week 2 .

Happy Drawing and see you next time :)