My Art Workshop

Playing around with some of the drawings from my weekend course, I ended up with this version that I really like.
Today I also did a bit of life drawing.

After this great fun Croquis weekend I decided I am now a master at drawing. So I ventured out into the world to draw the neighbour´s jersey cows, because that would be easy peasy now that I am a master, right? Well not quite!

First of all: Who the hell invented cows? They make no sense! They have humps and bumps and bits poking out everywhere! Second: Did you ever try drawing with 5 cows in your lap? That’s…hard.

I was comfortably seated in the pasture at a safe distance around 30 meters from the herd. The sky was a bright blue. Around me was only grass, meadow flowers and butterflies. It was purely idyllic. But by the time I had found pencil and paper, I had cows everywhere around me so close they were licking my toes and hair and cheeks and paper and pencil. Friendly, very curious and huge, especially when seen from a seated on the ground perspective!

The adventure of drawing cows ended prematurely with a hail storm. I have no idea where it came from, but it had me fleeing trying to save my papers from getting soaked. I shall be back – this was so much fun!

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I have wanted to understand metal and all it’s crazy reflections for a long time. This thing seemed to be the perfect thing to practice on. I mixed pencil, ink, watercolor and a bit of digital painting in PhotoShop to get to this result.

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I had the best weekend ever! Thanks mom this was truly an amazing gift 🙂 I spend 3 days drawing in Viborg at The Animation Workshop.

Hours and hours of drawing from live models. It was a challenge to stay concentrated that long, but I loved every moment of it. And best of all: I see very clear progress in my figure drawing from day to day.

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Friday early evening we went straight for the charcoal and tried to keep up with the fast pace of the poses. We started out with 10 seconds drawings and went on to 30 secs. Getting the drawings sized correctly to actually fit on the paper was a challenge, most of my attempts were lacking feet at this point.

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Then my teacher, Iben Lindeberg, came by and had a look at what I was doing. Her suggestion was to turn the charcoal on the side and roughly block in the figure before I started the linework. It worked instantly. From then on I did not have to struggle with size and could focus on getting flow, energy and balance into my drawings. At the same time I got a more fleshy look even though at this point the blocking in at first only was a matter of getting the size right.

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Saturday I started out playing with my new trick. It’s great, and it gave me time to really study the form of the figure, where the hips start and where the legs attach. What shapes head, hands and feet have. What the main line of action is through a pose, and where the weight is, and all that stuff there is to study when doing croquis.

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I had fun with that all morning. After lunch though I decided it was time to move on to new challenges. Again my teacher helped me out suggesting that after I had done the lines of my figures I used my charcoal to flesh out the forms. That’s hard! I really struggled, since using the side of a piece of charcoal instead of the pointy end is really hard to control, and it did not always leave color, where I wanted it. But overall it was definitely a step up compared to my previous drawings, and I was happy when I went home that day.

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Sunday I started out playing again with what I had learnt. It generally went well, but I did not like that my drawings turned so very dark, that even though I did all the shadows, the lines still made the drawing look rather flat and not very elegant.

I struggled with it, but had trouble finding a solution. In the lunch break I spoke to a second teacher, and he told me that lines are not real, they are just symbols helping the eye to interpret a form. Sometimes they are better left out completely. The eye will fill in the blanks with a minimum of symbols.

Also my teacher, who had helped me the other days, told me, that the eye likes contrasts. You will interpret stuff with high contrast as being close to you, where as stuff with less contrast will seem to be further away. I decided I would play with this, when we started drawing again.

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This was great fun again! I started with leaving out the lines more or less completely and only do the figures with the side of the charcoal. It turned out mostly terrible, but in a few figures it really worked well.

Then I started adding lines remembering they were symbols. I made them very simple and only used them sparingly to underline a movement. These last drawings I really really like. I think I managed to capture both movement and proportions, but also light and shadow. The drawings are way more elegant than what I had produced until now – yay!

I managed to learn new stuff every single day of this weekend 🙂

Spring sun is out today again. It’s Sunday and the camera needed exercising. My kid and I went for a walk, where we found BMX riders plunging with warp speed to their near deaths in the nearest abandoned huge gravel pit.

Some of the riders were getting through the marked track with impressive jumps and landings on two wheels at the finish line. Some of them ended up plowing the ground – head first. Good thing they were wearing helmets, though it still looked painful.

I have learnt today that action photos require shutter speeds around 1/800 in a sunny day to not get blurry. I wish I had learnt that sooner than by my last pictures today! Still I got a few acceptable shots of the daredevils.

Later I caught a couple of random critters in my driveway: Bumblebee and a sparkling young European peacock. I am happy we spotted it. Last year the peacocks were sorely missing in my garden, but perhaps they will be back this year 🙂

My kid and I went for a walk today and we discovered a new footpath to follow! We only got a tiny bit lost, had to climb an electric fence at one point and lost the foot path in a forest I never knew existed, less than one kilometer from our house 😀

The wood anemones are in bloom! and the forest looks like it’s been snowing again. I also had fun teaching my kid about the golden ratio. He brought my husbands camera and snatched a ton of great photos.

I am happy to report we found the foot path again and survived the ordeal, despite meeting wild ferocious animals (we met two deers, a common pheasant and a crow…)

I saw a photograph of Emma Watson with this funny expression and I wanted to capture it. So I started drawing and a couple of hours later: Voila! I am very happy with the result. I think I captured her smile OK, and her proportions are not completely off either. Of course there’s always room for improvement, but I think this is a step up in my skills. I like how I made her hair and the visible parts of the inside of her mouth, including teeth.

I think I captured the expression I wanted, and it did not take me days to get it somewhat right. A huge thank to my kid for being my critical eyes in the finishing stages to get it all right. He is great at seeing which parts are a bit off, and where I was missing something!

Today’s exercise: White circus horse in the red spotlight. Reference: My own photo. I would have loved this motif, when I was 10 years old and wanted my own horse. Now it’s a tiny bit too rosy red, but it was still a challenge to draw. And I guess one should never forget ones childhood dreams. So here’s to embracing them.

I kept the folder with the circus photos open and ended up doing a circus princess quick sketch. Adding some color and a lot of sparkle it ended up looking like this.

I went for inspiration in a random photo in my stash of photos in my computer again. Those are spear heads from the Illerup finds: Sacrificed war booty as local defenders fought off an attacking enemy in the iron age. I snatched the photo in Moesgaard Museum in 2004.

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My uncle, drawn from a photo, Summer 1962.

It takes time to draw portraits, but they are so interesting to work with, especially with people I know. It’s very clear if you do something wrong and the likeness goes bonkers. I like how this one turned out. It was a very hard and very charming expression to get right.

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