Saturday 5 November 2011

Keeping One's Hand In

In all of the hurly burly of life it is often to easy to neglect the basics of one's craft. When time constrained it is not unusual to dive straight into the paint pots without the best preparation and it is even easier to forget about honing the important underpinnings of our craft by missing out on drawing practice.

So this week's post is a little reminder to myself that I should do it more often. Sketch of a friend of mine done on Thursday evening. It isn't a great likeness but is a better effort that some of my recent portrait attempts which are littered with school boy errors. What is they say about practice?

Jed - Graphite on cartridge paper 8" x 6"

4 comments:

Caroline Simmill said...

Hi Mick, did you enjoy drawing again? I must say I prefer it to painting these days as one can always erase mistakes! I got some great drawing tools from Derwent which includes some nice blending tools for smoothing out and also lifting out in areas of the drawing. If this is a first for you in a long time then I think you have done very well. I like the varied drawing lines, dark tones in areas to his very carefully drawn and light in tones hair. You have also captured his expression well. I always struggle with that angle of the face and noses are always difficult too. Well done.

Unknown said...

Caroline - Many thanks. I have occasional bouts of trying to draw and am attempting to instil a bit of discipline into my artistic life and think that this should be an integral part of it. I'm trying to strip down the tackle so that I can carry art stuff wherever I go. As part of this I'm now using only one pencil, an HB 0.5 propelling one. It makes it interesting to achieve a range of tones. Less luggage means more chances of having a go.

Daniel Corey said...

Good job on this drawing Mick! I have to say also having seen your watercolors in person and online. Online doesn't even compare to in real life. Really great stuff!!

Unknown said...

Dan - Thanks for the encouragement.