Portable Project in Paisley

I’ve been enjoying my Sunglass Series where I can color pencil the people and marker doodle on something they are wearing. When I spotted this woman wearing her hat I thought I’d draw her next.  That wonderful hat gave me a lot of space for doodling.



I wasn’t sure how I wanted to approach this.  At first I thought of doing black and white doodles in the hat with the hat-band and the suit in color.



But then I changed my mind.



I didn’t want the band to compete with the hat, so black/white stripes worked well.



Since the underside of the hat doesn’t get as much light, I applied a light brown-gray in watercolor.



This skin took more time than I thought it should, but there are a lot of little variations to the colors thru the neck and the bust that I didn’t realize until I tried to sketch it.

If I would use smooth paper then we wouldn’t see all that grain coming thru the colored pencil portions.  But I like watercolor paper cuz it’s thick and can take all kinds of abuse!

Doodle Collaboration

As I mentioned in my last post….that there are some really good artists, doodler’s and art journaler’s on instagram.



One of my IG friends is Tessa. 



She sent me the above doodles from across the ocean.  I drool over her doodling and ….I like to color in….Tessa, not so much.



It was so interesting to see how Tessa made all these little daisy flowers amidst the hundreds of little bitty circles.



Here’s the finished scanned image.  A fun collaboration!  If you’re on instagram you should go over and see all the cool art and photography that Tess posts. 

Gotta love social media for getting like-minded people together

Sunglass Series Two

Since I have two big drawings pending (dancer & diver) and I seem to be stuck on the hair in both…..



I needed to complete a smaller drawing to boost my confidence.  I thought these sunglass girls might help.



This sunglass series was the first time I combined my marker-doodle-love with my color sketches.



I wasn’t sure how well they’d play together.  But they seemed to get along just fine.



I’m not one to sketch a practice piece, because I know I won’t put the focus into it like I should if it “counted”.  And I need hair help.



What I found out by my limited research on drawing hair….is to keep the line directions in the way that the hair should go.  Even though there are many shadows.  Also to use at least 4 different colors…..Highlight….a bunch of mid-tones…then bring in your darkest color to really help things take shape. 



This is drawn from a picture of my daughter taken a few years ago.  I was not pleased with my previous Warhol-style drawing of her so I’m glad I can now replace it.

Happy Easter Everyone

Sunglass Series One

I got inspired to draw girls in sunglasses last week….probably because I went south and knew I’d need mine.



Drew her in, and did a light watercolor wash.  Then proceeded to color pencil sketch the rest of the face.



Bringing my two favorite things together (markers and colored pencils) I experimented with using the markers only for the sunglasses. 



Just doodled the heck out of them.



Then the fun began with my markers.



Kind of a different look.  A Pretty wild look to pull off and not for the timid. Too bad I can’t do this to my own sunglasses, haha!

Ring Bling

Ring Bling…I’d love to have all this bling on my hands as long as it doesn’t catch, snag or bug me…..so the easier thing to do, is just draw some.



Just drew the contour of my hand, and proceeded to color it in.  No photo reference, but when I was stumped I just held out my hand.



Another hand with cool nails.



All those different colored pencils were used.  The green ones help to neutralize the skin tones.  Watercolor for the rings and markers for the nail art.



Just a fun little sketch.

Yin….Yang….doodle

Being in mandela mode and not wanting to repeat the previous patterns.  When I spotted this mandela doodle I thought I’d try something similar.



Graphed out my patterns.



Then I got to bring the colors in.



So simple and so fun!

Flower Overgrowth

After doing 4 different Mandelas I needed to focus on something different.  I like my mandelas, but for now, they all started to look the same to me.  I enjoyed my Floral Fauna a lot…it was different and it was colorful.  In sticking to the flower theme I thought I’d try a single flower…..but keep enlarging it.



I came across this mandela on pinterest and I loved the color theme.  So, I thought
I’d try to stick with the blues/purples/greens (the cooler colors).



But I can’t make those colors POP!! I had to bring in the rest of the wheel.  Had to replace some sharpies….Sharpie gets product placement endorsements here!! Haha!  I’m hoping I’ll gets some guts and grab a few of those unpopular colors.



….Applying the pigment….



I didn’t give too much thought to the background, just something graphic.

Diver Drawing….going green

It’s a good thing that I have wireless earphones because I’ve been in mode #3 since yesterday afternoon, enjoying this song from Despicable Me and doing my thing drawing!



I’m past the days of clearing off the dining room table each night before dinner and cooking.  This type of upheaval lasts for weeks!



You’d think that this type of sketching would be easier…..I like to draw people and it’s not like this is unfamiliar territory.  But I’m finding the same problem I had with my Horse Racing sketch with the main body of the horse.  Ya gotta keep that color consistent in a large area. And drop or add color so slightly to create the correct illusions.



Added yellow watercolor over the blue.  Then when it was dry continued on with green colored pencils to change the suit color to green.



Still much more to do, but at least she’s looking more the way I want her.

Floral Fauna

I wanted to do another marker design similar to my mandelas but with flowers.



The ideal portable project using my 8x11 watercolor moleskine.



I got the design down first, using rulers, stencils and freehand lines.



Fine point sharpies, faber-castell markers and bic markers are my favorites and used throughout.



I try to use all the colors.



Flowers get to be any color they want in these drawings!



I ended up finishing up the background in a parallel line pattern.  Lots of other options I would like to try: watercolor, gray/black patterned background.  But this worked at the time.