A fellow yoga student has asked me to paint portraits of her dogs. It’s to be a Christmas gift for her husband. This week I worked out the preliminary drawings. I haven’t had the privilege of meeting my subjects, so I am working exclusively from some photographs.
Here is Daisy:
Daisy’s canine sibling, Reggie:
It was pretty fun making the sketches and I’m almost happy with the results. There will be a few tweaks when I do the final line drawings that will get transferred to the watercolor paper.
My local art association is having an art sale in October. The members are asked to use 6×6 canvases to make artwork, choosing whatever media they prefer. At the event, each canvas will be sold for $66.
This is something I can do. This week I picked up three of these canvases. I came up with six ideas for subject matter. To get started, I made some sketches today (really, just contour drawings.) These will be painted with watercolors.
My hand was drawn from life. For the butterfly, I referenced a photo from the Audobon Guide to Butterflies of North America, published in 1980.
There were no photo credits in the book.
2. Baby sparrows in a nest: This drawing was made based on a photograph by Bill.
At times, parent birds choose unfortunate locations for building their nests. This nest was located in a door wreath at a downtown business. Here is my contour sketch.
I have something special in mind for this work. Fiber art will be involved, giving this painting more of a 3D object.
3. Two of my other ideas will be worked with fabric paint on cotton. I will recreate some early experiments of mine using the sun printing technique.
I’m excited to get started. Perhaps I will work on color selection later today.
On this sketching Sunday, I have two quick (sort of quick) sketches for the viewers to consider. First is my value study for the chickadee painting I am planning.
This image is a combination of the two chickadee photographs that Bill gave me for the 100Day Project.
He also gave me this delightful and slightly mysterious photograph of Lu’s face, as she peered through a wood structure at the CITY Museum in St Louis.
I did this study,
I intend to refine the drawing further, then ink like I did her brother’s portrait a few weeks back. This will be no. 44 in #The100dayproject.
Today I am pondering a painting subject that illustrates wintertime. Pretty quickly I settled on the humble chickadee. It is an ever curious, constantly moving little bird. Today our backyard chickadees are flying back and forth from the tube feeder. Each bird selects and grabs one sunflower before darting up to a tree branch where it consumes its quarry.
Fortunately for me, Bill has shared two photographs of chickadees suitable for my planned painting. But working out a composition that uses both birds is not coming easily to me.
Chickadee 1.
Chickadee 2.
My first try at a composition is awkward and unsatisfactory to me, so it won’t even get shared. I decided to make ink sketches of these two photographs, which will get them familiar and warm me up to the task.
On an 8 by 8 inch piece of paper, the little chickadee, which measures barely 4 inches, can be drawn at its full size. First, I worked out the placement using pencil, then inked the contours lines, adding value with various types of marks. My sweet subjects, black and white IRL, were rendered with ease.
This one is very curious indeed.
This one is demonstrating his love of sunflower seeds.
My two chickadee drawings are numbers 42 and 43 in the 100day project.
Now I need to figure out a scene that will serve as a setting for the two birds.
Earlier this year I shared some work made following a tutorial taught by Montreal artist Shari Blaukopf. She is an urban sketcher and watercolorist who offers a wide range of online lessons through Teachable. Today I finished painting A French Village Scene, which is the final lesson in her course by the same name.
https://learn.shariblaukopf.com/courses/
The challenges were multiple: perspective drawing, sketching in ink, and completing the scene with watercolor.
Here is Shari’s reference photo. She took it while teaching in France this year.
I labored over the perspective drawing for 2 or more hours. Perspective drawing doesn’t come easily to me, and I wanted my work to be believable, if not 100% accurate. When satisfied, I inked the important lines and erased the pencil marks.
I was forced to take some liberties with the scene, because my paper was not proportional to the original. Mine is wider.
I did most of the painting before our Thanksgiving trip to Wisconsin. Returning home, I was keen to finish this and get it off my workspace. Other projects, both started and planned are stacking up awaiting my attention.
Here is my (almost) final painting.
It’s a truism, at least for painters, that they must take some time away from a work before deciding that it is finished. So that’s what I will do. Even looking at it now, I see a few areas that need more work.
Daily Fiber 