Homage - Portrait Sketch

As I have no access to a live model at present, I thought I would get the juices going with a homage to one of my favourite artists, Annigoni.  This was inspired by one of his drawings.  The paper should have been smoother to capture the half-tones I was trying to emulate and the photography isn't that wonderful either.  Another very important realisation is that to truly explore and reveal the gradual, although dramatic, gradations between values, a much larger sized of paper is required.   Next time, maybe.

"Homage"

Graphite on Watercolour Paper - 9" x 6.5"

2020 - First Sketches

These are the first three sketches of 2020.

They were done quickly without much fuss as all I wanted to experience was the use of these new tools for drawing; water soluble chalks which are just superb and lots of fun.  I am not posting these because I like them, although there are some interesting marks in each work. I am posting them because I want to get back into the discipline of recording what I draw and sketch throughout the year without being strategic about posting my best work.  It's all going to be out there in 2020; good, bad and wholly indifferent.

"Close-up"

Drawing of another era

This drawing and watercolour was influenced by another painting - a sort of homage but I can't find out who the artist is; I screen-grabbed the image so long ago. I adore the viewpoint. This was my first attempt and it was done very quickly for an online challenge. I will work up this style when I have more time but, in the process of making of it, I was inundated with new ideas for bigger works. Lovely to work with pen on a ready-made background which consists of splashes of watercolour.

"Long Time Ago"

Waterolour, Pen, Gouache on Cartridge Paper - A5

Quick Sketch III

This was done in ultra-quick time. I had a load of small A5-sized paper with watercolour markings all over them and I started painting and drawing on them today allowing myself to be led by the marks. This one reminds me of the illustrations I used to love in childrens' books. I guess it is the innocence and softness of the lines.

"Avoiding the Day"

Pen, Watercolour, Gouache on Cartridge Paper - A5

Quick Pencil Drawing II

This was done very quickly last night while watching television. I just had the urge to sketch something, anything. The problems in doing portrait sketches from photographs are many, but the light in the room was pretty poor, but the end result is passable enough to post here. At least something got down on paper.  I see many mistakes, but I'm not fixing them.  No point really.

"Portrait in front of the television"

Pencil on Cartridge Paper - 11.5" x 7.5"

Another quick drawing this time with gouache.

Another quick drawing/sketch this afternoon. Same subject, different photo. I cannot replicate the sitter's face as I am so out of practice. Again the lighting for the photography defeated me. I do see some improvement over the last effort though, so that's something.

"Inspired by Anna (2)"

 Pencil, Watercolour & Gouache on Cartridge Paper - A5

Quick Pencil Drawing

This didn't go exactly as planned, but certain aspects of it surprised me. I haven't done representational work like this for years and years and it was quite liberating.  If the photography was better, the sitter's clothes would be much darker.  I honestly have to find a way to photograph pencil and charcoal works.

"Inspired by Anna" 

Pencil on Cartridge Paper

A Sketch and a Drawing

I felt like putting up some drawings on the blog today, and found these two. I haven't shown the complete work in either case.  The first is a section of a full life drawing and the other, a close-up of a charcoal portrait of no particular distinction.  In the latter, I rather liked the transformation of the original drawing by getting up close and personal and in the end, the close up can almost not be recognised as fragment of the original. That's photography for you. More drawings to come in the next few days I hope.

Close-Up - Life Drawing - Pencil on Cartridge Paper

Close-Up - Portrait - Charcoal on Cartridge Paper

Life Drawing Class...second time around

Last night's second attempt at life drawing was inhibiting as we had a male model whose form was very difficult to depict and standing there in the squashed drawing room, I thought "what a strange way to spend an evening!". Yes, it was strange. My irritation subsided after acknowledging that I wasn't in the mood for stiff challenges, but I carried on and did some acceptable work. The 'head only' was the best but I had some additional problems because I thought the gouache tint I had painted on beforehand would be slightly more sturdy and permanent but all eraser marks wiped off a little of the colour which makes the finished work slightly untidy.  Two more classes and then a Summer break.  I am so out of practice.

 

Head in Profile

Graphite sanguine on gouache tinted paper - 30 x 21 cm

 

Head in Profile - Close up

Graphite and sanguine on gouache tinted paper - 30 x 21 cm

 

 

(Also posted on Drawing Vault)

Life Drawing Class...It's Been Ages

It's been years since my last life drawing class and it shows!  However, it was great to get the charcoal scratching along the paper and to let go.  This was a 15 minute pose and I didn't have much time to correct anything but the model thought it good enough to photograph for her portfolio.  More next week, I hope.

Life Drawing Class 1.

Charcoal on A2 Cartridge Paper

Sunday Sketches

I've often wondered how those brilliant (mostly American) illustrators were able to convey form and expression on a face with just cross-hatching so I tried it here. It does obviously convey more detail than charcoal ever could with a similar technique, but lots more practice is needed. Again, the photographs just don't show these small works properly. Maybe I should get a digital camera that can take good black and white shots. The paper is a creamy white in both sketches, but I just couldn't adjust them to look like the originals.  Not a problem really.

Portrait Sketch Pencil on Cartridge Paper - 9.5" x 7.5" (Approx.) 

Portrait Sketch Pencil on Cartridge Paper - 7" x 7.5" (Approx.)

Charcoal Portrait - Melancholy Series

I haven't posted any work for ages and the reasons are too boring to write about but I have been mulling over and experimenting with the seductive medium of charcoal recently. Unfortunately the paper I am using is not fine enough to hold the fine cross-hatching but I am not running out to the art materials store like I usually do when something isn't quite right. The photography seems to have picked up some blotchy bits which are not apparent in the original even though I didn't use any flash photography.

"Portait - Melancholy Series"

Charcoal on Cartridge Paper - 16.5" x 13" (Approx.)

Gesture Drawing - Best of the Bad

I am determined to start drawing again, drawing each day and drawing skillfully. I recently found a website that puts up photographs of life models in various poses for artists to use and practice their drawings. Great idea and a fantastic service but heck, did it test me tonight. I drew better at school, truly. This close up of one of the drawings was the best of a bad bunch. Also, the photography isn't that hot.

"Head in Hand" - Close Up
Pencil on Cartridge Paper.

Value Sketches for Portrait II - Redux

Last night I sprayed fixative on this sketch to seal the charcoal hoping to add another layer today to darken it to the point where the values of the photograph are at least matched. I thought I had succeeded but knew something was detracting from the strong contrasts and the sketch was 'off'. I noticed that I had outlined the side of her face nearest the light which was incorrect; the edge of her face almost merges with the light filled background. I couldn't eliminate the fixed charcoal line so I painted over it with white gouache and, even though this is obvious, it got the sketch as close to the photograph as possible. These little things make all the difference. I've also nearly completed my second Boston painting for The Virtual Paintout, but it's been another dark day with leaden skies, so colour photography is totally out of the question.

"FINAL Value Sketch for Melancholy Portrait Series"
Charcoal & Gouache on Cartridge Paper - 12" x 9" (Approx.)

"Value Sketch for Melancholy Portrait Series"
Charcoal on Cartridge Paper - 12"x 8" (Approx.)

(Adapted from a photograph by Margrethe Mather p.96 "Portraits" published by Thames and Hudson 1982, 1983)

Value Sketches for Portrait II

I have just ended a week of annual leave. Nice, but I had hoped to get some really good work under my belt and didn't due to mountains of personal 'admin' getting in the way. I completed most of my chores but feel a bit down not having been at the easel all week - in fact for two weeks bar a mawkish attempt at another Boston gouache for The Virtual Paintout. I had also planned to get a new work complete to send for submission to a show overseas, but the work I produced was just good enough for a 'sketch', so I ditched that project. I really needed more time to produce the quality of work I had in mind.

So tonight, I thought "anything" just anything to get the creative juices going, so I started on another charcoal sketch for a project of mine based on "Melancholy". Goodness knows what will emerge but I have faces in mind and beautiful photographs to work from but I have to overcome my impatience and get to grips with doing preparatory sketches on values. I don't often get them right, so I decided to do the work below to try and get accurate contrasts between the darks and the lights. It's nearly there, but the photograph is not good. I just don't have the right lens or lighting for caputuring charcoal work accurately. I chose the 'sepia' one (accidentally captured) to post here as it shows the darks with more depth. I might post a better photograph if the sun appears in London tomorrow, which is unlikely. The Winters are getting darker and colder here. A move southwards?

"Value Sketch for Melancholy Portrait Series"
Charcoal on Cartridge Paper - 12"x 8" (Approx.)

(Adapted from a photograph by Margrethe Mather p.96 "Portraits" published by Thames and Hudson 1982, 1983)

Value Sketches for Portrait

I have been busy today. After posting the sketch for the Nocturne painting earlier I was determined to move some creative energy. I have two small canvases with a turquoise ground which I want to use for small portraits. I found two beautiful photographs in a glossy monograph on portraits and my works will be based on these. The format of the canvas is tiny - 5" x 5" - and, in prepration, I decided to do some value sketches in exactly the same size. It's been a day of values hasn't it? Many lessons in this session. Firstly, the tiny size cramped any possible rendering of the subtle gradations in the half-tones, and secondly, it was going to be more complicated than I first thought. I thought I would post these sketches here so I can get used to them. I also processed the sketch with a blue tint just to see how the values translate against colour. The light I was drawing in wasn't so good, nor was the photography, but I don't have the correct lighting or camera for drawings. I hope to start on the painting tomorrow.

Preliminary Portrait Sketch
5" x 5" - Pencil on Cartridge Paper

Preliminary Portrait Sketch - Blue Tint
5" x 5" - Pencil on Cartridge Paper

Quick Sketch.

I really needed to scribble this morning. I was hoping to get much more done in the way of sketching but in the middle of all of this, I felt I could only relax if I got through some domestic stuff and left this until I was more relaxed and focused. I have hopes of doing a self portrait for a blog challenge this month, and as I haven't painted or sketched faces for ages, I thought a warm up was essential. This is an understatement. I need major practice runs before I can pull of a reasonable portrait let alone a self portrait. I am putting this up because it makes me feel better. I'm very good at kidding myself this is work. This was done from a photograph.

Pencil on Cartridge Paper

8" x 8" (Approx)

Rembrandt Homage I

After spending so much time on my finicky Cup and Lemon Painting which took lots of phases to complete, all I wanted to do was let rip with an expressive charcoal 'something'; quick and easy and fun. Why I ended up processing a realistic homage to a Rembrandt self-portrait doesn't seem to make sense at first, but I started this work, loose and free, attempting to capture the basic form and likeness and then it just became more and more closely aligned with the original in all its aspects. I was working from an A4 size photograph of the painting on to an A2 piece of cartrdige paper. I wanted 'big' so I could free myself up from the rigours of painting on small formats, but I hit a snag, and I learned a lot from this. I was aware from the start that this up-scaling of the original would be challenging but I didn't know how just how demanding an exercise it would be. I couldn't get it exact, and Rembrandt's nose is wrong, but practice and investigation of rendering accurate proportions and measurements will get me there eventually. What I found hugely interesting was just how dramatic and stark Rembrandt's values are in contrast to one another. His darks are really dark and it took hours of standing back and saying to myself "nope - it needs more cross-hatching there" and then standing back again and finding out that even more shading was necessary. I'm leaving it alone now as there is just too much charcoal on the paper to make any adjustments. Another nice part of this experiment was not having brushes and palettes to clean up. Lordy, I'm getting lazy. Now, off to vacuum the charcoal dust of the carpet.

"Rembrandt Portrait - Variation I"
Charcoal & White Pencil on Cartridge Paper - 16.5" x 23.5"

Guess Who? Work in Progress.

I've stopped posting works in progress, because I felt they made my blog look untidy, but I just felt like posting a detail of this charcoal drawing I was working on tonight. It is going fairly well, but after sitting back and looking at it for a few minutes I can see exactly what the mistakes are. So I am back to work on it tomorrow after the fixative dries. Charcoal is magic stuff when you get the hang of it. I had been doing some sketching in the past few weeks and they were all complete trash and that is where they ended up. I am just hoping I can 'hold steady' and keep this one from ending up in the bin. More tomorrow hopefully, and hopefully this one is clickable.

"Portrait in Progress" (Detail)
Charcoal on Cartridge Paper

Determined to Draw

I am determined to draw a little, or a lot, each night this week. So determined was I when I arrived home tonight that I took out most of my charcoal and chalks, erasers, knives, and drawing pads and put them on the table so I would not be able to ignore them. This is a trick I have to play on myself. Although it is untidy and impractical to have all that material lying around, it makes life easier not having to unpack the material each night from my trusty toolbox.

I've decided for my next submission to the current Following the Masters challenge, I am not going to do a painting, I am going to do a charcoal sketch of the artist whose work we are paying homage to - Robert Henri. I have found a good photograph on the internet, so I'll work from that. I just don't know his work at all, and nor do I know the work of the Ashcan School. This makes me realise just how Eurocentric my art knowledge is at present, and even our libraries don't seem to have any decent monographs on his work or of his followers. I love to work from a good reproduction, but this time they are not available, so I'm going to use this challenge to practice my drawing. Not inventive, but totally practical. Some more clarity.

Off we go...