Sidewalk Crack Drawings

Finally got this lab done from the Drawing Lab book!  I was pleased when I realized that we weren't going to be drawing on top of the photos of cracks, but just using the crack photos as a springboard for our own drawing.  Then I ended up being very true to the photos. :)  I found this lovely wizard, but every time I tried to draw something that wasn't in the cracks it just seemed wrong.  This is a crack wizard and nothing else.  I still didn't capture him as well as the photo did.  But it was a fun drawing.  Then in another crack I found the goose who seems to be kissing another goose - but it's ephemeral - a reflection?  a ghost?  I tried to make the one goose look very solid and the other fade away.

Another Tree!

At Antioch Park - Jonas watched ducks and hiked around through the drainage ditch under the bridge while I sketched this tree.  The light kept changing as the sun went behind the clouds and I wanted to get those strong shadows - so I kept having to move around the drawing while I waited for the sun to come back.

I'm not particularly happy with my treatment of the leaves - There were a lot more of them than I got in here and the ones I have included look like goo blobs more than leaves.  Need to work on that :)  

First Attempts - "after"

I'm more than halfway through the book now - so I decided it was high-time I start to do some drawings.  Just from reading the book I feel like I'm already doing much better - though I still have much room for improvement.

 This is the tree and bush in my front yard.  Here I created a value sketch first (on the left, squeezed in on the page of very bad slide drawings from the playground)  From there I did the drawing on the right.  The approach of drawing a box on the page instead of trying to fill the page I got from the author - I love it.  Mostly because, especially in this 5x7 sketchbook, I can never seem to fit my drawing in - so even though I keep overshooting the box - I've still got room to grow.  Also leaves room for notes.  I used 3 different pencils here - HB, 2H and 6B.

I did this one today at the Nelson-Atkins sculpture garden.  Just a cheap #2 pencil from the bottom of the diaper bag - but I'm much happier already.  I feel like I got a fairly interesting composition, and my lights and darks are well balanced.  Those leaves look kinda ginko-y to me even.  But once I've got the hang of this nature drawing stuff I'll have to start working on my architectural drawing.  The building in the background looks like crap.  :)  Straight lines.  Why do they have to be so hard?!

Nature sketching - "before"

These are "before" photos.  Before I started reading the Sketching from Nature book.

This tree - I had no idea what to do with those leaves.  Minimal shading.  No background.  Pretty blah.

 

This is a drawing of the view out my front window last winter - which is a view of the empty lot across the street.  Which makes for a compositionally challenging piece.  There isn't really a focus - I started a touch of shading on the ground - then didn't like it and abandoned all attempts and putting in any values.

Sketching

My favorite drawing exercise so far from the Drawing Lab book was the zoo trip near the beginning.  I enjoyed it so much that I've repeated it several times whenever we've gone to the zoo or the nature center.  I realized that, while finding funny pictures in the swirly lines is great and all, I really want to work on being able to draw from life better.  I have visions of gorgeous plein air drawings.  So I did a quick amazon search and grabbed the first book they recommended (though I grabbed it from the library, because that's the way I roll) It's - The Sierra Club Guide to Sketching in Nature.   I'm loving it.  Just by magic it turns out to be written by a woman who lives in Missouri, so many of the sketches are of the landscape around me - handy!  I'm about half way through -- and so much of it is stuff that I already know - composition, line, value, rule of thirds, etc. etc.  But I'm loving it anyway, because, even though I know this stuff, it's good to be reminded about it.  The first whole chapter was just supplies.  And much like I will read through the list of basic kitchen equipment and cooking techniques in the beginning of every cookbook I buy, I read through this whole chapter.  Even though it's stuff I know, it's fun to drool over all the pencil types and conte and paint and colored pencil.  And there's always that little tip that I stumble across that I never thought of - like the author always sharpens her pencil with a knife instead of a sharpener.  She spends a few paragraphs describing how much better it is to do it this way (then of course tells the reader to do it however they want) so I tried it today - and she's right!  I love sharpening my pencils with a blade!  I'm never going back. :)

Anyway, I will include some nature sketches in here in the near future.  I'm hoping for great improvement :)

Random Pick

The next lab was the 'Random Pick'.  Making a list of 20 things that I like to draw was an interesting exercise in itself, I know I repeat themes a lot, but I found it almost challenging to think of 20 things I like to draw, because I often draw the same stuff over and over.  (Once I was done with the lab I continued my list and got it up to 47, so that was comforting)

Anyway, this drawing came from the following picks in this order: River, Fence, Cells, Leaf, Squirrel, Map.

Until I got to squirrel I was feeling kind of frustrated with my picks, because they were all kind of background stuff, I wanted a character animal thing for my main focus.  After I finished this and made my 47 things list I went to the random number generator and tried again.  This time I got: Fox, Spider, Grasshopper, River, Fence and Wolf.  Which was way way too many character animal things - so then I felt thankful for my original picks.  And also weirded out that fence and river came up twice.  I did a couple of quick composition sketches for the new picks, but nothing amazing came from it.  I might try this again though.  And maybe soon.  I'm kinda stuck for inspiration for my next painting...

Machines

Completed the Machines Lab.  Since the instructions wanted you to draw from life, I chose an assortment of objects around my studio to draw.  When I went to turn them into machines, I realized that most of them could be considered machines already.  Oh well.  They are extra machiney now.  :)

I was vaugely annoyed to realize how similar my one with the scissors is to one of the examples in the book.  oops.  darn examples.  Messin' with my creativity.

I'm sure someone somewhere has invented the swiss army phone already - but I personally would really like to own one.

Persimmons and Peppercorns

IMG_0036, a photo by Steph Toth Kates on Flickr.

The next drawing lab was collage. I chopped up a Vegetarian Times and made this. So I've recently switched from oils to acrylics for my "real" paintings - and looking at the examples in the book for this lab - I realized that this means I can *paint* in my sketchbook now - which was a very exciting discovery.
This was fun to do - I secretly love doing huge messy fast painting - but I don't love the way it looks, so I don't do it often - now that I can paint on paper I'll probably let myself play this way more often. So the bottom layer is acrylic, then I glued in the collage elements and then added the bird and some texture using oil pastels. (also something that I love playing with, but hardly ever use - again because I feel the results don't look good enough, even though I love doing it. Have I mentioned that this drawing lab thing has been great in that way - I get an excuse to play with all the fun stuff and not worry too much about the result being "show able" It's really nice. :)

Doodling on Steroids

Doodling on Steroids, a photo by Steph Toth Kates on Flickr.

I listened to the Emergence RadioLab Podcast and doodled this drawing. This was a fun lab, as I enjoy doodling and I enjoy podcasts :) It was also nice to combine so many different drawing materials. I was pleased to discover how well pencils and chalk pastels and charcoal pencils work together. There is colored pencil and sharpie in there too.

Numbers game

Numbers game, a photo by Steph Toth Kates on Flickr.

I picked two numbers and the related words were Rabbit and Sunglasses. So then I got to think of a way to make that into a drawing. Sunglasses just wasn't doing it for me, so I made the sun come through the glass and my rabbit is jumping out of the way. I don't love it, but it was fun to play with watercolors.

I skipped the "drawing on steroids" lab because I'm really excited about that one, and I want to do it, but I just haven't found the right time yet. Today was not that day, but I needed a warm-up before I got down to real painting today, so I skipped ahead. :)

Paint Blob Drawings

Paint Blob Drawings, a photo by Steph Toth Kates on Flickr.

Similar to the random squiggly line drawings - make a paint blob, find the picture. This snowboarder was my favorite. Click to see the others on flickr.

Random Line Drawings

IMG_0529, a photo by Steph Toth Kates on Flickr.

Scribble a line and find the pictures. As I was working through this exercise I was anticipating working on redoing my website, which stresses me out a lot - I hate making websites. So these images came out rather stressful - it was rather cathartic really :) click the photo to see the other's on flickr

Paper Dolls

Paper Dolls, a photo by Steph Toth Kates on Flickr.

The final project for the Inspired by childhood chapter was making paperdolls - this project had a lot of steps, and I was tempted to just draw something in markers and cut it out - but I decided to go ahead and follow the instructions - and I'm glad I did - the marker to gesso to smudging watercolor pencil with a papertowel process actually turned out to be pretty neat - and while these are certainly not masterpieces - they were fun to make.

 Not having an iconic illustrating style like the author, I had a very hard time figuring out how I was going to draw these dolls. In the end I fell back to the stiff "my head doesn't really attach right to my body" style that I developed in college for costume design classes. So then they also ended up in funny costumes. I made a dad, a grandma/nanny, a boy, a baby and a pet fox and octopus. Jonas worked on this project with me, and, as usual, I think his paper dolls came out much better.  He chose to disregard the last set of instructions and finished his dolls off with watercolor. :)  According to Jonas the one on the far right is a helicopter.

Illustrating Toby's words

Illustrating Toby's words, a photo by Steph Toth Kates on Flickr.

It sometimes bugs me how perfectly I fit into the expected readership of this book. Yes - I do happen to have a young child in my house, which is required for almost a whole chapter of the book. oh well :)
Toby goes to a French immersion school - so most of the writing I could find from him was in French - this was a caption for an illustration he did in Kindergarten. (His drawing was much cooler frankly) It's misspelled, but his teacher translated this as "the monster is in the water"
I've been looking at book illustrations that do a lot of pencil lines overtop of watercolor - and I've been wanting to try that - but I was nervous about messing up my watercolor. Then I realized that since the only way this will ever be seen is through it's photo - I could just take multiple photos and pick my favorite. Which is good - because I feel like I did end up messing up the original picture. The watercolor with no pencil was my favorite ;) But the other tries are here and here.

Collaboration with Toby

Collaboration with Toby, a photo by Steph Toth Kates on Flickr.

So Toby drew me, and then I drew Toby - and this is the result :) Toby says this is the angry-bird version of me :) He actually looked at me a lot while he was drawing it - which I was impressed by. I cheated and took a photo of him to draw from - I didn't think I could get him to hold that facial expression for long enough ;)

Clay Creations

Clay Creations, a photo by Steph Toth Kates on Flickr.

Drew some of Toby's clay creations. This one was made years ago - he might have been 3 or so - it's an ocarina. I helped him a bit ;) The other is a pumpkin he just made at school for fall.  I tried using a watercolor pencil for that one.  I really don't get those things.

One-Eyed Monsters

One-Eyed Monsters, a photo by Steph Toth Kates on Flickr.

This was a fun one. I drew 3 monsters the first without using the prompt words - the second (this one) by selecting prompt words at random and the third by picking and choosing my favorite prompts. Fun one.

Toys

Toys, a photo by Steph Toth Kates on Flickr.

Drew some of the kiddo's' toys. I was surprised to find that it was a lot easier to draw the soft toys than the hard plastic one. This is Jonas' favorite hippo that he sleeps with at night. I love this guy.

Scribble Drawings

Scribble Drawings, a photo by Steph Toth Kates on Flickr.

I have my very own once a week art morning now! Which is amazing. To warm up before I did some painting this week I did the scribble drawing exercise. It was fun, but certainly not something I've never done before. I drew a shell and a pile of bowls and my old film camera in it's case. (whatever happened to be on the shelf in my studio)

Dr. Suess-y

IMG_9390, a photo by Steph Toth Kates on Flickr.

I wanted to be inspired by the Dr. Suess project - but after weeks and weeks of putting it off- I realized that I wasn't. So the other day I was on the porch with Jo and decided to just bang it out in sidewalk chalk on the top of the porch wall. There you go - it is done - onward and upward :)