Western Division- Rider 648

"Spirit Paint" gel pen sketch

"Spirit Paint"
gel pen
small leather sketchbook

My last gel pen died, so when I found another one on my dresser, I was perhaps absurdly delighted.  I love the clean, crisp look of ink, and my recent stylized horses lend themselves well to the medium.  Today, I was the happiest while drawing that I have been in a few weeks.  I even feel up to the commitment of drawing as frequently as the pros suggest.  Maybe it's the simple, classic black and white that helps my brain focus and engenders a sense of excitement and passion.

I'm also trying a new style of signing my name; while I do like signing my full name, I've enjoyed other artists' very simple yet elegant signatures enough to try it myself.  RCF.  Rebecca creates forever.

A (very rough) concept drawing

Color Concept Drawing
pen and oil pastel
11x14

It's been a while since I had the gumption to tackle a drawing on anything larger than my little sketchbook, which is only about 5"x7".  Yesterday night was a lazy Sunday night, and truthfully, I didn't feel like doing anything at all.  The February blues would have me hibernate until St. Patrick's Day if I let them.  But, it wasn't quite bedtime, so I took about fifteen minutes to sit at my actual drawing desk (it's rather funny how little I use it), pull out a large pad of drawing paper, and see what my recent experimentation with the equine form would look like in Fauvist color.

Immediately I sensed that my form was off.  My hand-eye coordination has become much better at approximating perceived shapes, but that was not the case last night.  I can live with the anterior of the horse; the photo was of a Quarter horse, with a smallish head and stocky, muscular neck and shoulders.  But everything went flibberty-gibbet when I tried to quickly sketch out his barrel and hindquarters.  My usual precision was nonexistent, and the poor horse ended up with a very awkward conformation.  Front and back appear to belong to two different animals.  I wanted to give it up right then and there (and of course I was doing the initial drawing in pen, so there would be no correcting it).  I took out my cheap oil pastels anyway and began alternating colors at random as I drew each spiral, focusing on warm colors.  Again, I like the result of the head, neck, and shoulders.  The cool colors are too dominating.  They throw off the flow of the pattern and create an almost mental disruption for the rest of the horse, which reflects in my shaky lines and imprecise pattern.

This was certainly a learning experience.  While it is good to draw and create even when you're not in the mood, it can be somewhat discouraging for an amateur like me.  Without my normal focus, it is not pleasurable and I am not motivated to fix mistakes, even as they are happening.  Continuing practice until drawing is more muscle memory for me will ease the pain of such sessions.  I will not give up on drawing more regularly, despite my winter blues.  A professional does not wait until they "feel like it."  They simply sit down at the table and have at it.

Spiral Skylarks

"Spiral Skylarks"
graphite
small leather sketchbook

Wednesday Sketch

Untitled graphite sketch
small leather sketchbook

Sketch Friday

After reading an article about what differentiates a professional artist from the amateur, I decided that I would get out my sketchbook and draw, even if what I really wanted to do was pass out, face down, on my desk.  But, the professional artist does not wait for inspiration to strike.  Instead, she works at something every day.

The first drawing was so-so.  I drew this Newfoundland's face quickly, focusing on how large different patches of fur were and the lighting of each to determine my proportions.  As you can see, I ended up drawing over the original sketch.  For a little bit, I had a lopsided, four-eyed dog staring back at me from the page.  It was pretty trippy.  Now the dog is only slightly lop-sided, and because I did everything in pen, you can see that the dog's face was just a little too wide at first.  Okay, a lot too wide.  It doesn't have to be perfect, I chanted to myself as I slogged away at it.

Why do you do this to me.

It may be much less than perfect, but that dog is looking at you exactly the way that I wanted to look at everyone yesterday.

Ugh.  Feed me and tuck me in someplace cozy already.

That took roughly an hour and a half, and I had plenty of drawing time left.  It was time to go back to the old standby topic of interest- horses!  I was much more satisfied with this one, and I even reminded myself of Wesley Dennis's illustrations, who is best known today for his work with author Marguerite Henry.  Dapple gray is a difficult coat pattern to draw, by the way.  It requires quite a lot of patience and concentration for all of that detail.  That is where the beauty of suggestion comes in handy.  I think that this is the first drawing of two horses doing something other than standing around looking pretty that I've done in a while, and I used two reference photos for the composition.

"Tag"
graphite
small leather sketchbook