Author: martinnc

Sketch before painting.

I mixed a wash with some old sepia ink I had and tried adding that to the ink bottle sketch. Changes in tone were just down to layers. I could have added more layers, I guess. I went over a few edges with a 4B pencil.

Again, I need to improve my ellipses.

Drawn when I was very tired at 11pm. Really just wanted to go to bed.

I’d drawn this and done the colour swatches but when I went to paint it I found it had been chopped up and cooked! I had to guess the tones. I got the colour on the stalk wrong – the paint was too thick. It should have been a thin layer, and a lighter colour.

Then I did a wash for the head and it loooked okay just at that. I should have scanned that version for comparison. Then I went in and did some stippling to show the texture better. Again that first wash was perhaps a bit thick, and the colour too strong.

This is a tea cosy of a Dutch woman in a traditional costume. I made the initial outline a bit heavy. If I’d had more time I would have rubbed it out and drawn over with lines that express the texture more.

Trying to match the greens in the stalk and florets.

A sketch for a painting. It’s on poor quality paper (not even 80 gms print paper) so I’m not sure how the paint will take. I imagine the paper will start to disintegrate. I might have to pre-mix the paints.

Anotheer randomly-chosen subject to draw whilst standing. I want to be able to to just stand in front of anything and draw it without fear.

I wanted to practise drawing in a small sketchbook (A5) whilst standing up.

It’s difficult to keep the horizontal lines straight because unlike the vertical ones, there’s no reference edge nearby and the fact that your standing and close to the picture means you don’t have the same control of your arm. Maybe the trick is to hold the picture at arm’s length every now and then.

Quite please that I got the general shape about right – tricky because it’s a curved cuboid in perspective.