Real Life on Valentine's Day

A little sketch I did around Valentine's Day last year.  The hilarious card, the water bottle, the coffee pods, the sticky notes, the family photo, the dog brush, the cleaning solution for puppy accidents...

real life.

The Kitties

Hattie and Tim are nearly eleven years old.  We adopted them when they were barely six weeks old.  They had arrived at the shelter in a box with several other siblings.

Since then, they have been separated for only about three days, many years ago, when Tim had an infection.  They sleep in a yin yang position every single day.

Practicing Faces

I practice.  A lot.

Scribbling almost every single day.

Sometimes that includes exercises, either from a book or a video, or something that I make up myself, to learn something that I know I need to improve on.

Like human faces.

How am I going to get better at drawing comics if I don't get better at drawing human faces?

I thought I'd show you a few pages of my practicing.  No attempt to create anything pretty here!  Just lots of scribbling, with spirit, to practice, practice, practice.

Hattie the Cat Enjoys "Close Time"

I am working on finishing up my Strathmore tan toned sketchbook, which I started last fall.  My goal was to fill the book using only a china marker--and I am within pages of finishing!

Most of the work in this book has been gestural, but here I did a few more detailed sketches of my cat, Hattie, who will deign to let me draw her if someone else is also present appropriately adoring her.

Both of these were done very quickly, under five minutes each.

One think I love about the china marker--it goes very quickly.  And a second thing--it keeps me from fussing too much because of its blunt tip.

When I finish this sketchbook, I may buy another just to keep this practice going!

Simple Lines with the Dogs and Cats

More practice with shapes and contours.

I'm looking for the shapes that make these personalities come alive.   Distilling to the most expressive and necessary.  It's part of my thinking about working more on comics.

Portraits

A variety of fun portraits of people done with a variety of media, from the Koh-i-noor Magic Pencil to the Pentel Pocket Brush Pen.

Brush Pen Gestures

I have a hard time practicing gestures because I always want to get too detailed.

But when I do gestures, I always love them for their simplicity and energy.  I need to do them more!

Recently I practiced at a gathering at my home with my Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, which helps prevent me from trying to get too fussy.  You'll see a combination of dogs, cats, and people on these pages.

View at Breakfast

Sitting at the table eating a few slices of bacon....

Nice view for me.

Hattie (the cat) reports her view would have been enhanced by the taste of some bacon!

Concentrating on a Cat (Tim, That Is)

I'm still thinking about my upcoming time at the Center for Cartoon Studies this summer.

In addition to wanting to practice simplified people, I want to practice simplified animals as well.

Happily, my cat Tim is quite willing to pose almost any time.  He loves to be looked at and admired.

This first page shows Tim in a variety of positions--and me messing with a variety of approaches to drawing him and his striped orange and white coat.  How to best depict that with just pen and ink?  How much detail is necessary?  How much can I simplify?

This next page came from an online course I took with Veronica Lawlor, experimenting with mark-making, and drawing without a contour line (which I almost always use).  Not the sort of style I'm used to using, or seeing in comics, but then it reminded me of some of the greats who use a great deal of lines--R Crumb, Roz Chast.  Not that this looks like their work.  But it reminded me to go back and study how they do what they do.

Finally, I share this portrait of Tim, which doesn't look like him at all, but which I did in pen and ink, and then washed with color.  I wanted to play with how I could use color with the pen and ink.  I wanted to see if, knowing I was going to add color, I could have left more ink lines out.  I wanted to play with left whites and with shadows.

Also, this is the first thing I've done in a new Hahnemule Nostalgie sketchbook, which several of my drawing colleagues have raved about.  You can only get them from Wet Paint Art in Minneapolis--they have a lovely online shop as well.  The paper is thick and smooth and the pen glides beautifully on it.  And the watercolor is slow to absorb, so you can move it about.  The paper doesn't buckle.  I look forward to experimenting with it more!

Practicing on My Cats

Most of these drawings show my practice with the lessons in Mattesi's book Force: Dynamic Life Drawing for Animators which you can find on amazon here.  (I am not affiliated.  I just like the book.)

I am using a china marker on Strathmore toned tan sketch paper.

This next one is one I did on my ipad, using the same principles.

There is something different about these pictures when I practice Mattesi's ideas.  I want to do more of it.  I find more energy, more life, more shape and movement in the sketches.     And they are fast!!  Really scribbles.  My hand flies across the page and I can do them in seconds--and I find they are better (at least, in the sense of more pleasing to me) than ones I work much harder on.

More to explore!

B is for Breakfast

The next in the series of alphabet scribbles... practicing intentional page design in a handmade watercolor sketchbook.

Meal Time Rituals for the Household

I have two cats and two dogs and frankly, they'd all steal each other's food if they had have a chance.

So it's a complex ritual--a dance--to feed everyone all at once and make sure they eat what and how much they are supposed to.

This ritual involves me sitting around and watching them all.  Every morning and every evening.

Only this morning did it occur to me to sketch it.

Still thinking about what I'm learning in my Design class, I scribbled these contours and quick thoughts.

It's actually a pretty funny scene.

And I'm pleased with the sketches, because I caught the differences in postures between the two dogs--which isn't always easy when they are the same color and the same breed.

I'll be glad to have this record.

What else goes on in life every single day that I can record like this?

Given how crazy the world can be, maybe this is where the treasure lies?

Because the World Needs More Tim...

Working from a photography, I dashed out this 6 x 6 watercolor portrait of my cat, Tim.

Around the house we always say, "The world needs more Tim."  Because Tim, he knows how to live.  Everything is pretty good for him, and he is at home and relaxed no matter what is going on around him.  Friends come over, Tim lies in the middle of the crowd rolling belly up.  New puppies visit the house?  Tim waggles his tail at them and invites a game.  Dogs lie down on his kitty blanket?  No worries--Tim just curls up next to the dogs.

Really, everything is just good for Tim.  He is a cat of great acceptance and gratitude.

The world needs more Tim.

So, here's my contribution toward that, today.

Wonderful Pen and Ink Tips by Thomas Fluharty

I recently found this wonderful, informative, and fun blog post by Thomas Fluharty entitled, "10 Pen and Ink Drawing Techniques and Tips."

As he says:

The starkness and simplicity of pen and ink drawing can really challenge one’s artistic skills.

Yep.  True for me.  I love pen and ink and how fast I can capture things, like this capturing my napping pets.

But I want to continue to get better with my fast scribbles.

I've bookmarked the page, as well as sharing it here, so I can study those tips again!

Sketching a Canadian Lynx

Still working from a taxidermy specimen at Call of the Wild in Gaylord, Michigan, I spend some time studying a Canadain Lynx.

For this set of scribbles, I started with a blind contour drawing.   You can see that at the top of the first page below.  A blind contour is a sketch of just the outline of the shape of the object, drawing with your eyes locked on the object.  You never look at the pen on the paper once you start drawing.

Blind contour drawings often result in goofy scribbles that don't look much like the object--but then again, somehow, they do.  They pick up interesting energy and shapes that while not technically accurate, often have a "true" life of their own.

After the blind contour, I finished out the page with a close-up of the animals's facial structure.  Two really different types of drawings to warm up my eyes and brain and hand and heart.

Then I tried a portrait of the creature with just watercolor.  I wanted to use an unrealistic color, but also approach the painting a bit like a drawing, just to see what it would look like.

You can see how the warm-up ink drawings, the contour and the facial structure study, helped me create this portrait.  I really like the variation of line weight and color, which adds, I think, a liveliness to the viewing experience (at least to mine!).

Consider scribbling something in unrealistic colors and see what you discover!



 

Sketches of the Spring Kitties

As soon as the weather gets warm enough (usually mid-April here in Michigan) my cats, Hattie and Tim, start clamoring to get outside.

They are indoor kitties through and through, mind you, but, like most kitties, they have a pretty active fantasy life.  So I let them out and sit and watch them.  This year, I took a fine liner and a brush pen with me.

I sketched quickly, blind one-liners, quick gestures, just capturing shape and fluidity and a little bit of light on Hattie's all-black coat.  It's a constant challenge to me, scribbling images of an all-black cat, so when I could, I tried to catch the sheen of April sunlight on her coat.  I feel like I am learning to see that a lot more clearly.

What do you see new today that you've seen, but not noticed, many times before?

Scenes of the Breakfast Wait

Around my house, one of the most anticipated moments of the day is breakfast.

This anticipation comes, mind you, from the two cats and the two dogs.  And as much as they love their breakfast, what they really anticipate is mine.

Could be someone in my house (spouse?) shares bites of cereal with them.  I just don't know...

Anyhow, they have positions they assume each and every morning.  So the other day, I decided to draw them.

You can see that the dogs have a much more laid back approach, but trust me, they are watching every move either human makes.  One step toward the cereal cabinet and they fly off the bed.

I did these in my Strathmore mixed media 500 sketchbook with a fineliner.

I wanted to try some unrealistic coloring with watercolor, just to practice values and such.  So I printed a copy of the sketch of the dogs onto cardstock and painted it.  Cardstock isn't the best for watercolor, of course, but it was fun to mess around. 

This is the fun of scribbling--seeing what you love in the world, and then playing with how to capture it!

What about your breakfast ritual could you draw and/or write about?

And check out Danny Gregory's terrific book Art Before Breakfast!

Out of Time? Draw While You Stand Around!

Not long ago I had one of those days when I thought, whoa.  No time to draw today.

I committed last February to drawing every day for at least thirty minutes.  I didn't want to blow it just because a bunch of unforeseen circumstances took control of my day.

As I headed down to my basement to feed my dogs, it hit me:  draw the dogs eating!  I have to stand around and watch them anyhow, so no one (namely the cats) bullies anyone out of their food.  That would be at least ten good drawing minutes.

I only got Nora inked before she finished eating.   Both of them ran upstairs for the post-dinner nap ritual, so I followed.   I sketched Nik as he fell asleep.

You can see from the unfinished sketch at the bottom that I tried to sketch Tim as he considered a nap with the dogs, but he left before I got much done.

Then I got dinner underway and instead of watching the news, I painted my sketches.  Good practice learning the watercolors.

Some days, you just can't sneak a good scribbling session into the day.  But you can sneak some scribbling into the cracks and it can add up to good time and good practice.