Upside-down Nightmare

One thing that really helped when I started learning to draw was turning the subject upside-down. The less you are able to associate objects with their proper names, the less likely you will be to draw their simplified, symbolic representation. It's a valuable tool to the beginner, and still a useful exercise to the advanced artist. Today, though, it produced a nightmare creature.

I can't imagine what people were thinking as they walked by my quiet table - with an upside-down magazine, a pencil and this monstrosity looking back at them. Not that I mind what they think. Portraits and figures and my weak spots - I know that if I want to get better I have to keep challenging myself.

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Drawloween (at my own pace) - Pumpkins

Inktober Day 3 - "Bait"

Old school pen and ink. I haven't used a crow quill pen since high school - and, even then, I remember struggling to get it to work. This time, I thought I would try to create something using only cross-hatching. The prompt word today is "bait". This word took me into a lot of different ideas, but the one I ultimately landed on is based on the will-o-wisp. In my head, I imagined glowing orbs in front of a copse of swamp trees all created with layers of cross-hatching. Things had to be scaled back a bit. There are still two trees in the background if you look hard enough. Success? Sort of. It forced me to use a different kind of pen and, in doing so, made me want to keep going and get better with it.

The World of the Small

Drawing and painting small objects is a lot of fun. There are a lot of details that one doesn't really pick up on when an object is viewed from afar. Small things, by virtue of their size, are always viewed this way. As far as the painting itself, it was fun to get some use out of my tiny brushes.

Rainbow Bisque

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