Category: Life drawing

Day?! Rhineharts

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  Sold a painting to Rhineharts that will be on their Masters Week shirt. How exciting is that. I know stacks will be sold that week. 
  The shirt pocket

I sat out front of Rhineharts waiting for my high school friends Peggy and Karen. We are all excited to be on the shirt!! 
Yesterday I got in Charles Reid’s class at Cheap Joes. It fills the instant its released. My friend Mike and I got one of the 16 places. Now to contain our excitement til May 2017!!!😳😃 
Thanks for reading. 
Margaret xxx

Day 629 – Henry Time

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This weekend my sister Jan and I tagged teamed my sweet grandchildren Henry and Livia. Henry slowed down enough for me to sketch him watching Care Bears and playing with his cars his gramy bought him at Mc Donald’s and Publixs. 

  

  His dad asked me if I bought him a car at Publixs and I said Yes of course he asked for one and a rabbit for his sister and flowers for his mom but we knew daddy didn’t want anything but that ham we cooked!!

   
They also went to the zoo. When I asked Henry what his favorite part of the zoo was he told me you Gramy. What a kid. Lol.   

    
Last a bit of ink fun with my Kuretake brush pen. I just like the quote.  And it’s true. Hard to be perfect. 

I got the quote from the strathmore art on line sketchbook Art Ninja Graham Smiths class.  Check it out. It’s free.  I wish I drew glad as well as he does. Here is his website. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx

Reasons. 

Day 616 – Flapping those wings. 

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She’s been thru a lot of changes now. Really love her wings. In fact really like EVERYTHING except one tiny thing. Her right breast.  How did it get so round?! But that’s easy to fix. At least I think it is.

Hardest part will be going downstairs to the garage to get the paint out of the car. 

Here are a few before and in he process photos.  

  
Saturday after an hour and a half. Maybe she was better then.  I dunno. Anyway she told me she wanted to be an angel. 

  
Monday. At some point I think I for her left foot to light in the bottom. Hmm how?! And I didn’t like the stripiness of the wings. 

 

Knocking   Back the gold and dark streaks in  wings. I added a lot of brushy dry white. 
   
And the bottom part brushes out whiter. I also added a lot of iridescent gold and a smidge of copper which is impossible to see in a photo. 

Ok so I will fix her foot and her breast.  The foot makes her look floaty somehow. Took me till Judy now looking at all these photos to figure out why she looked that way. 👀  And I thought the problem was her breast. 

Thanks for reading.  

M who needs a nap now. Xxx
Margaretxxx

Day 606 – Sunday Fun!! 

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  Been drawing with platinum carbon black ink and a bamboo stick. Really a lot of fun.  

I started going thru the pics to find something to draw. I mean why would I want to go outside on such a lovely day?! 

Watching Downton Reruns ff thru the begathon. I already send them $$ 
 Anyway I found a cute one of my granddaughter and drew it. I had a few too many black lines in her tiny face like the eyebrow. So I painted her w gouache. 

First gouache portrait ever. Not easy but at least she’s not black from her nose to her chin. 

The only way I could get a soft edge on the face shadow was to feather white over her dry cheeks. Totally different experience from watercolor or acrylic.  

Gouache brands used Winsor Newton and Horadam. Colors red yellow white blue and burnt sienna. 

A
  


My lab  Honey drawn with the Noodler Creaper and smudged with a wet finger. She’s a very long nosed lab. Not a block headed English lab like Isis on Downton. Touches of burnt sienna gouache for her eyes. 

 
This one was drawn with the stick too. Fun fun. I think her eyes are a little high but oh well.

Get a stick and try it. You might like it. 

Thanks for reading.

Margaret xxx 

 

Day 605 Another Saturday

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Ilania Acrylic 24 x 30ish”

Really liking today’s painting. This one is officially FOR SALE if she needs to come live at your house. 

  

This was painted almost entirely by the world’s cheapest brushes. They shed.  I had to  remove several bristles off the painting.  🙄 And they don’t hold an edge. They are raggedy but they make some great bold lines in the paint.   

Conversely I used some of the most expensive paint. All golden acrylic. Reason I say expensive is that I used Goldens Quin Nickel Azo Gold which was selling for $27.99 at Michaels the other day when I loaded up on white paint during their 40% off sale. Ouch!!  Glad I have had a new bottle of it waiting for the old bottle to be empty. 

Other colors it was painted with were ultramarine blue, pyrrole red, Zinc white and a smidge of burnt umber.  The only resin I used Zinc white was because it was the first tube of white picked up but it could just as well have been titanium white. 

White, pyrrole red and Quin nickel Azo gold make a great flesh color. 

    

Here she is at second break after about an hour of painting. Those brushes cover a lot of ground FAST!!  If I hadnt decided her face was a smidge to narrow she would have been done. I also didn’t like the shadow on the left arm. 
 

Forty minutes of painting.  Almost blocked in. Of course I had blocked her in four times at this point. 

First time I had the canvas vertical. I couldn’t see her calves or feet so that was not going to work. I turned the board and started over. 

Second time I decided I wanted her leg along the bottom of the canvas. Had to start over. 😁

Third time I didn’t quite get her to fill up the canvas.  😂

Fourth time I think I could have blocked her in with my eyes closed!! 

That’s about it for today. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx

Day 599 The Name is Bond

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  James Bond -6×10″ Arches Carnet de Voyage HOT Press 

Lots of fun last night sketching at Wet Paint party at Sacred Heart Cultural Center. 

  

The Vintage Olie models were styling James Bond movie fashion style. Lucky Ruth Pearl and I had a table right next to one of their six pedestals as they rotated around the audience. 

  
I really liked this just as it is EXCEPT all my gooey only fingerprints all over it. Sigh. The light we were drawing in was terrible and my beloved Noodler was leaking as usual. Not conducive to clean drawings. 

Misplaced my non leaky Noodler

 Konrad.  😱

 
Background is gouache. Covers those ink prints!! 

Wc Used Quin coral , French ochre, cerulean, burnt sienna, burnt umber, ultramarine blue. 

More urban sketching coming!! 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx 

Day 598 – It’s Saturday 

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Fun morning painting in Aiken. Our model was a no show but Ilania was there to draw so she kindly stood in for Alice the no show. 

  
Here she is blocked in after our first go round. I was really liking her at this point. Maybe I should have stopped then? 

I kept putting her belly button down past the third head hash mark which just threw everything off. 

Odd how that works. Finally at the ninth hour my nonmathy brain got it. It was above the third head hash mark. Duh!! 

Background has to be done but otherwise just a twitch here a twitch there. However too many and she just goes down the tube. 

Despite that considering these twitches!!😨 

Fix right breast. Too droopy!😔

Left eyebrow eyes too defined wrong angle 

Left hip. Curve starts at belly button 

Thin neck top to bottom on right

Shadow left of left breast

Dark blue line shadow under left hand.  
 Hopefully these will all be minor twitches. Nothing major.  

Funny story Ruth and I thought we were going to get the backside of her including the head but at the last second she turned around to face us. 

 Hurrah!! A pretty great  pose. 

Ilenia is such a gorgeous girl too bad I don’t do her justice.  

Colors used cobalt, nickel Azo gold white, burnt umber, ultramarine blue, cerulean.  And that’s it. 

Thanks for reading. Urban sketching coming up. Yeah!! 

Day 582 – A little reworking

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  Don’t forget to leave a comment for the 600 days drawing. Hmm is that a pun?!
I decided that all that green blue  I had painted on her was awful looking so I started painting.  

 That raccoon look was NOT good. Edges needed softening ALOT. 

I added a lot of burnt sienna for shadows and some nickel azo gold with pyrrole red and white for flesh tone. I also added a dark grey with sand in it to the background and then washed it with a thinned white. 

And softened edges. In case you don’t know. What that means it means that the edges are blurred aka softened like around her mouth and her eye. 

At the last minute I realized her tight shoulder was too high so I took about half an inch of the top and a bit off the side to round it some more. 

For the moment she’s done but you never know. Sometimes when you look at them you realize more work is required. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx who needs a nap. 

Day 586 – Ilenia

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Ilenia 24″ x 30″ Acrylic I have been paying attention to what Al said and trying to block everything in exactly before I start painting even though it’s more fun to just paint paint paint but the results are always disappointing when it comes to the human figure. They are almost always just off a bit here and there. 

  
Here she is blocked inat about 40 minutes of work. I didn’t notice till much later that her head was too big and as Dave said her haunch was too small. 😋

If u look u can see my hash marks from measuring her head. They are dark blue above her hip and to the left of her arm. 

I actually had started measuring her from the orange hash mark on the far right when I realized she would be painted on the right side of the board. So I drew another hash mark and started measuring her from the dark blue one. 

  
Here Ilenia is mostly sorted right before Daves she needs a bigger haunch remark. Funny thing is I had just told Charlie that he need to draw hers rear bigger on his drawing. That it was bigger than we think lol. An easy fix. Just add a curved swath of flesh color to fix her rear problems. Lol.  

 
Here she is now.  I think she could use a bit more work on her left eye and on her hand but hey I have a sweater to finish knitting. 

Colors used cerulean cobalt Winsor purple. The green is one of the blues and nickel Azo gold. Combines for an interesting color. Flesh is cad yellow, pyrrole red and white. Sometimes I used the nickel Azo gold for the yellow. Can’t live without that color. Love it!! 

Ultramarine blue and orange for her dark brown hair and brown shadows. 

Thanks for reading.  

Day 584 Inside St Sauveurs

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A quick sketch drawn while sitting in the lovely early morning quiet of the church. Not that Les Andelys is a hub bub of noise and activity!!  It was lovely to sit in the still in the old rush seated chairs and admire the 16th century stained glass windows.

I think I really enjoyed drawing this one because we could not even stick our noses into the Rouen Cathedral or even see the whole facade due to the Christmas market construction at the base. 

All that way and no good looks at Monets famed cathedral. Sigh! I guess I will just have to go back!!! 

I coated the sketch with an initial coat of Winsor yellow and let it dry. I also used a lot of Quin burnt orange on the walls of the apex. 

Shadows are burnt orange and Inathrodone. Not quite as dark as burnt umber and Inathrodone. A nice light alternative. 

Windows – marine blue, ultramarine blue, purple and bits of Winsor yellow. Each color was allowed to dry before the next was added. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx