This week I wanted to draw something simple and calming. I had been looking at some extraordinary photographs of fungi. And some beautiful pictures of slime moulds.
While the inspiration was awesome I think my final design feels too busy and too structured. Moreover, it doesn’t capture the beauty of the fungi and slime moulds which I can see in these beautiful photos. It was quite calming to make and I enjoyed drawing the beetle.
Here’s the finished picture…
Sometimes a project just keeps going wrong. I had this experience when I tried to paint a small, quick painting of a hamster.
The first one…
… was cute enough but had funny ears and the shadow to his left looked all wrong.
Hamster number 2, unfortunately, looked like a rat…
Finally I had one last go.
Pencils…
First watercolour wash…
Final image…
He will have to do. 😊
This week I had some fun with bubbles. I made some in a cereal bowl using fairy liquid…
Then I spread them on the paper and added watercolour paint to them like this…
Then I left them to dry in a cat resistant place (on top of very high shelf).
Here are a couple of examples of the raw images which I got from this experiment…
I felt that they were OK but I lost the second colour on the blue one and the blobby shapes weren’t very appealing. So I decided to use them as a starting place for some digital art.
Here’s what I made…
and…
I began this painting with a pencil sketch using a range of Corvid skulls for reference although the main one was that of a Rook. There were aspects of each reference I wanted to include in my final image. I started in the usual way by drawing basic shapes and then filling in increasing levels of detail to each section of the drawing. Here’s how the sketch turned out…
Then I began inking the drawing using my Rotring Rapidograph technical pens. I chose these for this task as they provide the lovely thin consistent lines I wanted for this piece. However, I had not used them for some time and one of the thicker ones was slightly gummed up which allowed it to drip ink. It was making lines which were very thick with ink and took a long time to dry. At the same time I was wearing a shirt which had longer sleeves and I ended up smudging the ink – really badly.
The long sleeves…
…and the smudge…
I thought about how to handle this while I set about breaking down the pen and properly cleaning it out. I was very much closing the barn door after the horse had bolted. Eventually I decided to try drawing some fictional shadows and cracks onto my skull like this…
While it doesn’t read perfectly the sharp dark shadow just above the eye hole balances the tone of the drawing overall so I was OK with the fix.
Here’s the ink drawing…
To finish the image I decided to add a few washes of black watercolour paint. I love the way the combination of black ink and black watercolour work together. Here’s the final image…
jo fox - adventures in art 