My first Inktober

There’s no doubt that the shame of the shear amount of rarely used pens and ink that I own is a contributing factor to my first ever participation in Inktober. It’s one of those myriad art “challenges ” that breed in the dank corners of social media, however this one has become one of the better known month long events.

The sad result of too many trips where buying art supplies became our souvenirs.

Simply take whatever form of ink you like, Biro, pen and ink, brush pen, whatever and draw every day for the month of October.  The rules are satisfyingly loose enough for people to pretty much do what they want, and of course, you post the results of your daily efforts on whichever of the social media platforms you favour.

Fountain pens and brush pens filled with different inks

There is a list of daily prompts you can follow, or you can do your own thing. I’m opting for the latter. My plan is to draw portraits of artists from old photographs.  I hope this will give me sufficient leeway to focus as much on my technique as it does on the subject matter.

Now I have a month to rectify, or at least revive some skills in that area.

To be honest, I really need to! In the run-up to the challenge, I have struggled to get a reasonable result because I largely have stopped using my fountain pens for regular art making.

What I am using for the challenge.

I’d love to hear if any of you are doing Inktober too.

Face Painting

Here are some more watercolour sketches of faces of people in cafes.

26Jun2017b

My first sketch, which also included some pen and ink (note to self I find the ink lines rather distracting, even though they give ‘definition’)

As part of my ongoing strategy to disrupt lazy habits I decided to use only a Daniel Smith test palette for my colours. This palette includes a number of colours that I don’t have in my paint selection. The other benefit using this card is that it’s a lot easier to carry if you are traveling light.

Untitled-1

The John Orlando Birt colour palette for Daniel Smith

I was happier with my results when I ditched my pen and just stuck to the watercolours.

26Jun2017a

Man in a puffa jacket, 26 June 2017, watercolour

I think that this head of a small boy was the most successful on the day.

26Jun2017

26 June 2017, small boy, watercolour

Another day and another cafe, same watercolour palette. Three people who were sitting at the same table.

4Jul2017

Three portrait sketches, 4 July 2017, watercolour

By the sea, by the sea …

We spent yesterday at at Surf Beach near Bateman’s Bay, on the NSW South Coast, just under two hours drive from Canberra. It was our first official swim of the summer and we plan to make a few more trips over the coming weeks.

Because we like to maximise the amount of time we spend on the beach we always take our beach shelter/tent thingy, otherwise known as the ‘Sand Palace’. This allows us plenty of shade to retreat to between swims and, as I discovered, makes an excellent place from which to sketch your fellow beach-goers without being too obvious about it. Luckily for me I’d recently re-read Lynne Chapman’s post on some of the classes she’d done at the 2013 USk symposium in Barcelona which included some great suggestions for quickly capturing people (in a drawing that is). To quote from Lynne

“… if you want to catch someone’s brief pose, you can use watercolour, just one colour, to quickly capture the main shape, then use a watercolour pencil to add just enough line to pick out details, while the paint is still wet.”

It all sounded so easy until I put my brush to the page. My first few attempts were dodgy to say the least, but I did like the umbrella, fluttering in the breeze.

First attempts at capturing quick sketches of people and an umbrella, watercolour and pencil, 8 January 2015

First attempts at capturing quick sketches of people and an umbrella, watercolour and pencil, 8 January 2015

OK moving right along, I started my second page. I seemed to be getting the hang of it. This time I quite like some of the figures. I have however, cropped the page, thereby sparing you from one of the most heinous landscapes I’ve painted in recent times.

Second page, some better results. Watercolour and pencil, 8 January 2015

Second page, some better results. Watercolour and pencil, 8 January 2015

By my third page I felt I was starting to get the hang of the process. I’ll keep working on this approach as it yields good results.

Some fun images including people carrying inner tubes and the beach flags, watercolour and pencil, 8 January 2015

Some fun images including people carrying inner tubes and the beach flags, watercolour and pencil, 8 January 2015