Prehistoric trading cards....

Well their not great... I should have said no to this trade, but I was on such a good run. I had several sketches done and ready to do, but every time I took them out I just stared at them. I think I had ATC burn out. Jim suggested I should do cave painting, they'll be easy, ha! I talked him into doing them with me since I had no ambition to do this. We found out that those simple looking stick figures actually have beautiful sweeping lines and graceful curves. Not easy to do on a 2.5x3.5 card. I can't imagine how they did it on rock walls!
I am responsible for the funny looking rock walls that are in the background. I did them with oil pastels, something new to try and a quick way to put down a lot of colour. Jim did the three hunting scenes and I did the two on black.
Jim did the cards with dinosaur bones, one in oil pastel and one with a white conte pencil. while he did that I tried a cave painting of my own design on sand paper. I used a picture of a deer from our backyard, maybe not true cave painting style as you can see the face, but it was fun to play.

Sad Puppy....

This weeks challenge at DS included this sad little girl. She belongs to Jeanne Grant, this weeks host. I haven't done her justice, but after 4 tries I am calling her done. Good or bad, I do like the look of a continuous line drawing.

Portraits...

Learning to draw a portrait is one of the most difficult things to do. I mean I can map everything out and take 30 or 40 hours and come up with a great portrait with a good likeness. I can after all see Jim looking out at me in his portrait, his lips, his eyes, yup it's him.





What is really hard is to take a person or photograph and do a quick sketch of them . Not only do you have to follow the laws of nature...the face does follow certain patterns after all, you have to capture the essence of the person you are drawing. The thing that makes their face unique from the other 6 billion people on the planet.




Now I will have to apologize to these beautiful ladies. I do feel that I captured some of their look, but I don't think their Mom's will call for copies! Now I have heard one of these ladies say "practice, practice, practice". So back to the sketch pad for me, because I would so love to be able to whip off a sketch of someone and have it be recognizable.