Colour Mixing Wheel.....

This after noon I found a colour mixing wheel in my bookmarks. I have ignored it until today. When I found it again I thought to myself this is exactly what I need to work on. In my thought, colour mixing is an art form all its own and if you can't do it you will be limited in what you can paint.


I started a thread over at Lori Andrews-Come paint with me. Asking that beginners jump in and try their own colour wheel and that the more experienced artist give some constructive critiques.


I had a hard time making my purple and my yellows seem similar. I found out that you use a lot of yellow, a bit of red and a touch of blue when you are mixing colours.

Sculptural Book Making....

One of the newer members at Drawspace is an art teacher. Garth offered to do some art classes for us, which I jumped at! In this first class (first of many I hope) he showed us how to bind a book. I used black paper, cardboard and red cord.
Garth used Power point and video to teach the course, trying to find out what works best with Drawspace. Both were very well done, the video had the added bonus of Celtic music in the background.

A black nose....

I couldn't resist trying Gracie on black paper. Just a 3x3" of her nose. It was suggested that I might want to try her on gray paper. I'll have to see what I have in my scrapbook supplies and give it a try. I have been saying for ages that I wanted to try a mid-tone paper. If I like it I can go and buy some for a full picture.

Gracie's nose.....

I tried harder at the negative drawing with this one. This is something I will have to learn to do if I am going to draw Gracie. I will also have to learn more patience, I started getting to rough with the pencils near the end and started to lose my way. Well that is what practice is for, right?

Dog eyes and a nose.....

I am in a CP animal drawing class at Drawspace. Our first thing to do is try out some eyes, nose and fur. The picture on the top right is after I add more reddish browns, the dog was more red than I realized.



I didn't do as well on the dog's nose, not enough patience. Something you need loads of with CP.


I took my camera on our walk today, hoping to get some decent pictures of Gracie. The sun was really bright and washed her out a bit, she looks really grey here. Today was a real treat, it was warm enough to wear shorts.

Photography....

Over at Let's Make Art I have been leading a photography class. At first I wasn't sure I was the right person to take on the group. I have no specific knowledge of photography, I just love a good picture.

Then I realized that I do have knowledge to share for the amateur and that there are plenty of people out there giving information that is more specific to photography, lens and lighting and f-stops, oh-my. What I can give is how to get a good picture that you want to draw and display. I can teach how I pick my photos, how I set them up and what I look for in a good photo. I can teach, that with a point and shoot on automatic, you can get great photos.

With my lessons, where I am also learning, I give them challenges to complete. This photo above I got when the challenge was to go out at different times of day and take pictures with the light at different angles. This one was set up in the early morning.

All Cozy In Their Nest...

Here is the drawing that I did for my PIF, this went to Jan at Pets to Posies. I did this drawing right after I did the little lesson for Wilson and I. The lesson was basically about getting depth to your drawing. Here you can see how I applied this lesson to my drawing of the cygnets. The first photo is before I checked my drawing in black and white. The last photo is after I darked up the drawing, (staying away from black). The middle photo is of course my source photo from Hotblack at the Morgue files (Scott has some great photos to check out). With the black and white photos I exaggerated the whites and darks so it is a little easier to see where I needed to go darker and where I needed to go lighter. I do believe I managed to bring more form to my drawing. Although as you can see, I could still push it further. I also see that I need to keep an eye on my colours. A Black Cherry might have been a better dark than the Indigo Blue.

A Lesson for Wilson and I....

Uncle Wilson and I were talking about art the other night. We were talking about colours and giving depth to a picture. Basically, to my way of thinking, how to make your art come off the page and be visually interesting.
On Drawspace I manage the weekly drawing challenges. When I am looking for new hosts to put up their photos, I give them some tips on how to pick a good picture that people will want to draw.

Here are some guide lines for picking successful pictures. 1. There should be no blurry areas, except artistic, the pictures need to be sharp. 2. When you put the picture in grayscale, you should see a full range of tonal values, (black thru white) not a general shade of grey. 3. There should be no flash used (unless you are a professional photographer and know how to light a picture), natural light is preferable.

Okay now you have a great photo and you have drawn or painted the picture. Why does your drawing sometimes make you go "Wow, I did that" and sometimes feels like it has missed the mark? The thing we were discussing is depth. I was showing Wilson, on PhotoFiltre, how you can grayscale a photo and then posterize it to exaggerate the shadows, or tones, in the pictures. This can really help teach you to see the values in the photo that you want to get in your drawing. What I didn't get a chance to discuss (with Uncle Wilson) was that you can do the same thing to your drawings. This is what I did this morning. I took a look at my recent Bird of Prey pictures as well as my owl from Halloween. I was very happy with how my owl turned out and I had varying degrees of happiness with the rest. I then applied greyscale and posterizing to the original photo and my drawing. Here are the results.

Bird of Prey 1

Bird of Prey 2

Bird of Prey 3

Owl

The photos that I worked from are beautiful works of art in themselves and this shows through. If you look at the greyscale you can see a wide tonal range in each picture. Now in comparison that is not always the case in my drawings. I do believe this is one of the reasons why I have those varying degrees of happiness with my different drawings. Now with the posterizing (exaggerated shadows and tones) I can see where I needed to go darker with my colours and where I needed to go lighter. One thing to note when working with colour pencil, and I would think any other colour medium, a heavier hand does not make a darker colour. Certainly you have to fill in the paper more solidly but you also have to use darker shades of the colour and more layering of complimentary colours. For example, the yellow of the owls eyes, I used various shades of yellow as well as purple in the darker shaded areas.
Anyways...look and compare and train your eye to see the different values in the picture you are drawing.
Please click on the titles of the photos to go to my original posts, I give credit to the photographers and you can see more of their work.