Virtual Sketch Date: March 2009

Pencil and colored pencil, 7 x 10 inches

This time I decided to sketch for this month’s Virtual Sketch Date. Partly because I knew if I painted it, I would get caught up in the details. Also I was just in the mood to try something different. This was done in pencil with a little bit of colored pencil added in here and there. I had fun with this. It’s good to shake things up and try something different sometimes. You can view the work of other participating artists here and here.

Selling Art

Earlier this week I was at my day job, working on a customer’s computer on site. While I working on the computer, Rick was showing someone my art on Flickr. They mentioned how much they liked one particular painting. Now I’ve never made much of an effort to sell my art. It’s more of a mental roadblock than a conscious decision. A more alert person would have offered the painting to them for x number of dollars. After all, I can make more. Me, I just thanked them. Oh well, next time. For those of you who make a better effort to sell your art than I do, here’s a list of observations and suggestions from someone who recently spent some time buying art. I thought there was some good information in there.

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See all of my Virtual Sketch Date posts.

Katie Cat

Katie Cat , pencil in sketchbook
by Sydney Harper

I've been wanting to paint our cat, Katie, for a while now. So lately I've been working on some compositions. This is probably the one I will use. There's not a lot of detail except in the face. Mostly I just wanted to get the primary lines down. The face is where I have the most trouble, so that's where I focused my attention. I drew the eyes several times before they looked right, where I could look at the drawing and say "That's Katie cat."

Looking for my muse

Rick waiting

I've been traveling to conventions and vacationing and just being busy. Now I've just got to get my muse back on track. Sometimes my art focus feels disjointed, often brought on by people asking what I paint. (Answer: Whatever I'm in the mood to paint.) There are things I don't often paint or draw, people for example. I've been trying to work on that more lately. Otherwise, it's mostly what stirs me. Robert Genn's recent letter on Working Your Muses and Jeannette's post about What Warms Your Soul got me to thinking about focus again. So I made a list of all of the things that have interested me and stirred me. There's art and museums of course but there's also nature, water, geology, science in general, cityscapes, moonlit nights, and plants. I keep adding to the list but it's all starting to come together into something (what I don't know). It's getting my muse anxious to start. In the meantime, since I've been working on sketching people, this is a sketch from a photo of Rick while he's waiting to do a magic show. It's not a perfect likeness but it's not bad. We were at the mall and it was one of those moments when the light was perfect. So I snapped a photo before he caught on so I could sketch it later.

Tiny Quick Sketches

I started a new sketchbook recently so I thought I would post a few of the sketches that haven't been posted yet before I put it away. Usually I'll mark off a few pages into tiny squares for quick sketches. I may fill up a page in one sitting with little studies for a painting or it may take a month to fill up the page. This one took a couple of weeks. All of them are things I saw sitting around me. Each square is about two inches. Starting from the top left and moving clockwise, my laptop and mouse, a folded envelope, a chair, a pencil case, Rick in the chair, sock knitting.

Dexter Ferret

Dexter Ferret

copyright by Sydney Harper

One of my goals for this year is to practice drawing animals and people. Since we have a cat and three ferrets, that's an obvious place to start. I've had a harder time with the ferrets though. I'm not sure why. This drawing of our ferret Dexter finally looks proportioned right. I'm pleased with it. The others are okay, but everything clicked with this one. Isn't it great when that happens? Now today's goal will be to do a bit of painting.

Katie Cat From Behind

Katie Cat From Behind
copyright Sydney Harper

I'm back from being immersed in taxes, some short trips, and a boatload of work for the past couple of weeks. I've been focusing on doing quick pencil sketches lately. Katie is a good subject since she sleeps a lot, like most cats. I've also been sketching from the Sunrise Earth show on HD Theater. It's not like sketching in plein air but there's subject matter that isn't readily accessible for me. I'm also stuck in planning mode for my next painting. Sometimes I do too much planning, trying to achieve the perfect subject. So I'm determined that I'm going to just start something this weekend. In the meantime, here's something interesting I found.

Explaining Science Through Drawing

Since I have a degree in science, I get a lot of science-related email in addition to art-related and knitting-related email. This article from the National Science Foundation came as a pleasant surprise. It turns out that the act of explaining scientific concepts through drawings helps the illustrator understand the underlying concepts. The next step of this project is to get design students together with science students so they can learn from each other.

Sketching While Waiting

My Foot
copyright - Sydney Harper

My husband had to get some work done on his car this week. If possible, we try to make a day, or at least an evening of it, and do some things around town. We still have to deal with the time spent in the waiting room at the auto shop though, so we go prepared. He brings his computer. I bring my sketchbook and my knitting. We had a longer than usual wait this time so I knit a little, sketched a little, knit a little again, and sketched again. I practiced sketching some of the people in the waiting room. Then when I ran out of subjects, I drew my foot, which just happens to qualify for EDM 1 - Draw a shoe. I usually carry a copy of the Everyday Matters (EDM) Challenge List in my sketchbook in case I run out of ideas. Having time to just sit and sketch makes car repairs a much more pleasant experience. Things have been so busy lately that I seldom have such a large block of time to just sit and sketch.

Expanding horizons

One of my goals this year is to do more sketches of people and animals. I find that I'm often avoiding them because they never seem good enough. Of course, it's hard to get better if you don't practice. So that's what I've been doing. This is a couple of quick sketches of one of our ferrets. These were done from photographs. The ferrets are seldom still enough for life drawings.

On a somewhat related note, one of my favorite blogs lately is Gurney Journey, James Gurney's blog. Currently he's doing a series on animal characters and he has been doing a Sunday series on color and palettes. I've learned quite a bit from following his blog.

Exercising Your Doodles

Before Christmas I bought Bert Dodson's book Keys to Drawing with Imagination. The first few exercises focus on doodles, or rather doing more with doodles. These are some of my examples from the first exercise. I like this book. Even the little doodles feel inspirational. While the book feels like it would be more useful for illustrators, I'm getting a lot of out it. I doodle as much as the next person, but some of these doodles are new to me. As I read through the exercises, I can see how many of these could evolve into paintings. I'm enjoying working through this book.

You won't find much in the way of actual drawing technique. The book does have a lot of good tips scattered in it. There are instructions for building your own light box. There are also many tips for combining and transforming your doodles and sketches into new drawings. The last part of the book focuses on artists and some of the themes they've chosen for their work. I think I'm going to get a lot out of this book.

Random sketches from 2007

I don't really make resolutions for the new year, other than trying to do better. I do like to evaluate my progress over the past year though. Sometime around midyear, the rest of my life got very busy. Art and this blog kind of fell by the wayside. Things are still a little crazy. Until things settle down a bit, I thought I would show some of the messier pages from my sketchbook. When you only see the nicer pages from a sketchbook, it's easy to assume that all of the pages are like that. There is the occasional nice, neat sketch but most pages are filled with quick sketches, notes, studies, doodles, silly sketches, lists, and thoughts. These two pages are typical. Every so often I'll make a page of small squares. These are for very quick, less than a minute, sketches, doodles, and value studies. Often, I'm also drawing a subject over and over for practice, like the cat. At the bottom on the right are some quick faces I was trying to draw from the TV. Faces are not my strong point. These extremely quick sketches help me relax a bit since there's no way they can look polished. Here's another page of small sketches.

Here's a couple more pages of quick sketches of flying birds for practice.

My Moleskine watercolor sketchbook is much tidier. I just can't bring myself to make a mess in it. but it's my everyday, inexpensive, messy sketchbook that brings me the most inspiration.

A Quick Value Sketch

Life has been hectic lately. More on that another day, but time and energy for daily sketching has been hard to come by. On those days when I'm feeling brain dead and tired but want to sketch, I'll select a project from one of these books - Mendelowitz's Guide to Drawing (I've had my copy for a while) or The New Creative Artist: A Guide To Developing Your Creative Spirit. This time I selected a value exercise from A Guide to Drawing and used one of the thumbnail drawings in my sketchbook. It's different from my typical drawings and there's not much to it but I like the general idea. I may develop this idea further. Maybe being tired is good for my inspiration.

EDM: Lightbulb and News

I was tired this weekend, plus I had to work today. I was determined to do the last two EDM challenges,though. So here are some quick and dirty sketches.

First up is EDM 107, where I get my news. Our mail box and paper box is built into this brick, uh, thing. So I drew in just the part that holds the paper. It's done in ink and watercolor pencil. The delivery person usually does a good job of shoving it all the way in the back of the box so you have to peer in there is make sure it's there.

Next is EDM 108, a lightbulb. This is an appliance or ceiling fan bulb done in pencil. It was the only bulb available without removing one from a lamp. It's a little wonky and misshapen. I discovered that the hard thing about drawing a light bulb is that they roll. So it has a little mixed perspective. I had fun drawing this though. I might have to try more light bulbs.

EDM 102

I'm still here. It's just that I've been busy and then our pet ferret, Balt, got sick and died. I haven't had a lot of spare time. Anyway, I joined the Everyday Matters Group a while back but I haven't participated at all. Then towards the end of January I had a little spare time at the office and did this weekly challenge to draw a power plug. I wrote down Jan 06 but it should be Jan 07 for the date. I still haven't adjusted to the new year yet. It's just a quick and dirty pencil drawing. Hopefully I can get back into the artistic swing of things again.