Skip to main content

Mouths Are Scary

I have a confession to make about today's drawing: the mouth was the last thing I ended up drawing, and I was hoping I would run out of time before I got to it. Drawing mouths is a tricky thing - the teeth can end up too big, the lips too flat. I suppose noses are difficult for the same reasons. Deep down, I felt like I was doing a great job on the rest of the drawing and adding a mouth could ruin the entire thing. I had to remind myself: this is a sketchbook, this is an opportunity to learn, nothing in these pages is precious, everything is an idea and a learning experience.

China marker is great for a left-handed person like myself - it doesn't smudge or smear. Unfortunately, it also doesn't smooth out very well. This makes it difficult to create certain textures - or a lack thereof.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ferret

Trying out a challenge to myself - to create "finished" pieces with a limited color palette on a consistent schedule. I am still working out the final guidelines. I think I would like to challenge myself to use a new texture in each piece as well. I've had this unfinished sketch in my sketchbook forever. Even though I'm not entirely happy with it - it feels great to finally have it done!

A Competent Profile

As I start to become more familiar with proportions and measurements for the various faces I attempt to draw, I am starting to wonder how to make a more complete portrait with my limited time. Do I stick to lines? Do I bring a brush and some ink? Which lines should I include? Which shapes are important to represent? Maybe this is a good time to look at the work other artists have done and try to work out some of their methods.

Rules and requirements (mostly for me)

Initially, I was taking a look at my scanner for the maximum dimensions of a painting. I realize now that archiving paintings is a bit more involved than posting 300x300 pixel GIFs. So, some of these pieces will need to be photographed. Others will be scanned (provided the paper doesn't curl too badly). Here is the rough draft of my proposed project: I will create 2-3 finished watercolor pieces every week for the year 2014 The minimum dimensions for each piece will be 4x6" (no maximum) Materials list: Watercolor paint (in tubes or cakes), watercolor pencils, brushes, India Ink, bamboo pen, white gouache, and gold paint pen. Subject matter will change with every painting. I know there is a lot a person can learn from painting the same subject over and over, but this is not that project. New paintings will be posted on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Expect extra posts to occur between those days. Since the whole purpose of this project is to learn, I plan on reading and resear...