Tag: Pencil drawing

Back to Basics: Perspective

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date February 12, 2008
16 Comments on Back to Basics: Perspective

Pencil sketch, 9×12 (larger)

I studied perspective in college drawing class but didn’t completely understand it, didn’t like it, and thought I had little use for it. Years later my friend Barbara gave me a copy of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. In that wonderful book, the author offers a more “right-brained” way to work with perspective, using a variety of strategies that allow one to see angles and shapes without having to use more “left-brained” techniques like 2-point perspective.

It gave me what I needed to draw well enough to get by, and I came to appreciate my slightly wonky style of drawing. It worked just fine for free-spirited sketches or paintings. When I needed something to be drawn accurately (as the basis for a realistic watercolor, for example), I would either grid it up, trace the enlarged photo onto watercolor paper, or draw/erase/draw/erase first on tracing paper until I got it right and then trace that onto watercolor paper.

I got confused in this one…it has several problems

But plein air painting, which I’ve become passionate about, requires a quick accurate drawing in order to start and finish a painting within 2-3 hours max. After that time the light changes so much that colors, shadows, and anything moving (clouds, creatures, water) are completely different. Starting with a bad drawing dooms the painting right from the start. I needed to go back to basics and get a grip on perspective.

I grabbed Keys to Drawing by Bert Dodson, read the section on perspective and started sketching stacked up childrens blocks, stuff in my house, and from my imagination, trying to understand perspective.

Here’s something I didn’t know before: The horizon is always at your eye level. The horizon line (e.g. where the sky meets the land or the sea) is actually what you see when looking straight ahead at your eye level, whether you’re sitting, standing, or lying on the ground. I find that really amazing — it just seems so self-centered, somehow.

(I drew eyeballs on this one to remind me of my point of view/horizon)

A few things still confused me so I did some more research on the web and found two helpful sites with good information. How to Draw and Paint, offers a couple of basic, easy to understand articles about perspective. Ralph Larmann’s Art Studio Chalkboard from the University of Evansville goes into more technical detail and provided answers to the things that were confusing me (like what happens when the object straddles the horizon, or the object is at an angle, like peaked roofs, or the ground is hilly).

I’m going to do some more practicing using what I’ve printed out from those two sites. I also picked up an excellent book from the library: Perspective Drawing by Kenneth Auvil, which is actually fun and interesting reading. Any other suggestions for improving linear perspective drawing would be gratefully accepted.

Tags Pencil drawing, Plein Air

Animals Drawing Faces Life in general Other Art Blogs I Read Painting People Sketchbook Pages Watercolor

Noses (catching a cold)

Pencil and watercolor, 8×6 (larger)

Pooh! I’m catching a cold. Here’s a sketch of my nose which is getting a lot of attention right now. I set up my mirror on my drawing table and Fiona hopped up to bask in the warmth under my lamp so I got to draw both of our noses.

Inspired by Laureline‘s recent experiments, I dragged out my ancient, very first watercolor kit of Schmicke watercolors. She’s right — they are more brilliant than any others. Also inspired Laura I tried using a Mars Lumograph 8B pencil I found in my pencil box to draw instead of my usual pen. It was really silky and fun to draw with and nearly as unerasable as a pen.
I wanted to do a painting about a neat flying dream I had the night before but I need to feel better to get into the spirit of that dream. I’m feeling too limp and funky to paint flying and soaring. Noses are about it for today.

Tags Animals, Cats, Faces, Pencil drawing, People

Oil Painting People Photos Sketchbook Pages

Woman at the museum

Oil on canvas board, 12 x 16″
To enlarge, click images, select All Sizes

Thumbnail sketch (1.75×2.5″) in sketchbook for painting

Ink in small Moleskine notebook
(original sketch at SF Museum of Modern Art cafe)

A few weeks ago I went to see the Picasso and American Art exhibit at SFMOMA and was inspired by this woman’s thick, grey hair in a giant clip and the way the teeth of the clip separated her her hair. I also took a photo of her while I was there (below) but the view was different from my drawing so I didn’t end up referring to it when I made the painting. I’m still struggling with oils and acrylics but this one was a little easier because I stuck to black, white and 3 grays. I had intended this to be an underpainting and was going to glaze over it with the colors of eggplant and chocolate but decided to leave it because I like it the way it is.

I used Gamblin Chromatic Black for the darkest darks which is not a dead black pigment like most. From the Gamblin website: “Chromatic Black is black, but it has no black pigment in it. It is made from two perfect complements: Quinacridone Red and Phthalo Emerald.” For the grays I used Gamblin’s Portland Greys in light, medium and deep. So there was no color mixing, just a value study and an attempt to get some control with applying and blending oil paints.

Tags Pen and Ink, Pencil drawing, People, Photos

People Sketchbook Pages

Figure Drawing

Pentel Brush Pen and water in 6×8″ sketchbook – 20 minute pose

As you can see we had quite a large model tonight. She was excellent at posing but when you faced her back it was like drawing a landscape with a big mountain in the middle. So I grabbed a small notebook that I could easily carry around to the other side of the room along with my brush pen and waterbrush. I drew with the brush pen and used the waterbrush to bleed the ink out for shading. Then the next pose I went back to my table and big sketchbook.

Pencil in 14×17″ sketchbook – 10 minute pose

Pencil and Pentel Brush Pen with water in 14×17″ sketchbook – 20 minute pose

It was a good night at figure drawing after an annoying afternoon working on the postcards for my show in March. I learned a lot of stuff I wasn’t really interested in learning but they’re done and finally ordered.

Tonight they had the overhead lights on instead of the directional ones because they needed to replace the bulbs in the spot lights. It was nice having enough light and there were still some decent shadows.

Tags Ink, Pencil drawing, People

Drawing Flower Art Photos Sketchbook Pages Still Life

Starting Over

Graphite in 6×9 Aquabee sketchbook
(To enlarge, click images, select All Sizes)

I’ve been struggling with an oil painting of this image …

and finally realized that it wasn’t working because I hadn’t first done a value study and compositional sketches. So tonight I set aside the painting and started over with this sketch to simplify the image and study the values. I took the photo on a rainy day in December when the sun suddenly broke through and lit up these roses I’d just clipped from the garden that were still blooming despite the December storm.

As much as I love to draw, sometimes I’m impatient to get to the fun, juicy painting and so I skip the preliminary studies. Once in a while that approach works, but more often it ends up feeling like I’m wandering and lost in a maze, with no end in sight.

But if I start with a study or two first to determine what really interests me about the image, how I can simplify it, where I want the focus to be, where the lights and darks are, what I want to exaggerate or de-emphasize, and what colors I’m REALLY seeing, then I have a much better chance of success and hence a lot more fun with the paint. I might still get lost along the way, but I know my destination and how to get there.

I wonder if I should have one leaf overlapping the front of the bottle. If you see any compositional problems or have suggestions, I’d be happy to hear them. Sometimes I find it so hard to see the problems in my own work. Just looking at now in the post I can see I need to lengthen the stem on the top left rose as it looks a little too short to me.

I’m going to start over, using my new sketch as a reference so I can focus on the light, and the colors in the bottle which was what interested me in the first place. If I don’t get tired of it, I might try it in oil, acrylic (bought some acrylics today) and watercolor, just for fun.

Tags Pencil drawing, Photos

Animals Drawing Illustration Friday Sketchbook Pages

Busby “Buzz” Berkeley – Illustration Friday

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date January 5, 2007
11 Comments on Busby “Buzz” Berkeley – Illustration Friday

Pencil sketch/study for monotype. Aquabee 6×9 sketchbook.
(To enlarge, click image, select All Sizes)

I’d been planning to work on sketching my cat Busby, also known as Buzz, to prepare for doing a monoprint of him today so it was convenient that today’s Illustration Friday cue is “Buzz.” Here he is! My next step is to do the drawing again with brushpen and ink, trying to work out making it just black and white. I want to see how extreme I can take it — how few lines and shapes are needed. But that will be tomorrow because…

Tonight is the opening party for my brother-in-law Tim’s show of his photos about building (and burning) the temple at Burning Man (photos) last year. So it’s off to the Lucky JuJu Pinball Art Gallery in Alameda, CA to party instead of painting. Here’s one of Tim’s temple photos:

Photo by Tim Englert

Figure Drawing Group Tonight

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date December 1, 2006
14 Comments on Figure Drawing Group Tonight

Pencil in 14×17″ sketchbook

Sketched with watercolor then ink and watercolor washes added. In 9×12 Aquabee sketchbook

Ink (Pentel brush pen) with water added to make washes in 14×17″ sketchbook

Friday nights there’s a figure drawing group open to the public that meets on the U.C. Berkeley campus. It’s a great deal– $4.00 for 3 hours and excellent models. Our plans to go were on and off and then suddenly on again so we arrived a little late. This model really knew how to pose in interesting ways and was quite beautiful (my pictures don’t do her justice). I experimented with sketching in pencil, in ink, and watercolor with ink added afterwards. It was all fun and challenging. I saw a man there who was a regular in this same group when I used to go 20 years ago. His charcoal sketches are still phenomenal.

The whole time we were drawing we could hear people chanting, yelling and clapping nearby. I found out afterwards there was a huge pep rally going on because tomorrow is the “Big Game” between Cal (public university) and their arch rivals, Stanford (private, pricey university). When we left we saw the band playing and marching from campus up Bancroft and into a building across the street.

Tags Pen and Ink, Pencil drawing, People

Every Day Matters Life in general People Sketchbook Pages

Bubbie Hanging Laundry (EDM #88: Breezy)

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date October 20, 2006
16 Comments on Bubbie Hanging Laundry (EDM #88: Breezy)

Drawn in sketchbook with pencil, scanned into Painter, and digitally inked and painted.

I was very close to my grandmother and was born on her 50th birthday. She was very short and round and so soft…her skin was like velvet…well, very wrinkled velvet, and she always smelled like the sweet dusting powder she used. She had no clothes dryer–didn’t believe in them. She hung everything up to dry in the backyard, though she could barely reach the clothes line. Then EVERYTHING was ironed…even underwear, towels, and sheets. She had a special canvas laundry cart that she dragged the laundry around in that had a pocket stuffed with wooden close pins that I liked to play with. As she ironed she sprinkled the clothes first to dampen them (before steam irons) using a glass milk bottle (from when milk men delivered your milk each morning) with a special top that had holes in it and was designed for that purpose.

I was so happy a few minutes ago…I’d finished this memory drawing of my grandmother (Bubbie) that I’d been working on this week (which was actually for last week’s Everyday Matters challenge) and I’d finished this week’s Illustration Friday challenge and I really liked that drawing too–it WAS so cute and funny. And then Painter crashed just as I added the final, finishing touch. And then I realized I’d been working for two hours and NEVER SAVED that file!!!!! I can’t believe I did that! I was going to post this picture tomorrow and post the Illustration Friday picture tonight, but I can’t. It’s gone. And it’s midnight. I can’t do it over now.

Maybe losing my file was an omen–I’ve been trying to decide whether I wanted to continue pursuing/exploring digital art or stick with watercolors. If I’d done the drawing by hand, I would at least have something to show for the time, something to work with as a reference if I had to do it over. But I have NOTHING. Maybe this was the message I needed to tell me to forget about digital art and stick with paint and paper?

Tags Painter Digital Art, Pencil drawing, People

Drawing Life in general Other Art Blogs I Read People Sketchbook Pages

Dad’s drawings: A tiny treasure found

Post author By Jana Bouc
Post date October 3, 2006
7 Comments on Dad’s drawings: A tiny treasure found

In a recent post I mentioned that sometimes when I’m drawing I’m wistfully reminded of the wonderful cartoony sketches my dad used to do. I remember one time he drew me, all knobby knees and elbows and I loved seeing my image appear–it was like magic! I thought none of his drawings or paintings remained, having been angrily disposed of by his second to last wife (all right, his second wife, but it was all so dramatic and scandalous at a time when divorce was rare and he was moving on to his third and last wife.)

When I was helping my mom try to find an old photo album in her garage yesterday, we found a tiny greeting card-sized album containing mementos of her marriage to my dad–a few wedding photos and some cards and sketches he’d made for her when she was pregnant with me. I felt like I’d found an absolute treasure and was so pleased that she allowed me to take his sketches with me.

My dad died a few years ago around this time of the year so it’s really nice to be able to remember him now through his drawings and to share them with you on my blog.

(All of the following images by my dad, Howard Goldstein, can be enlarged by clicking on the image and then on “All Sizes”)

Below: Charting the labor pains “June 17, June 18” (I was born on June 19th.)

Below: “RivaLee Enters A Room”

Below: Talking to the doctor: “And then at 2:16 she had a harder pain but at 2:27 she…”

These were all drawn in pencil on the back of paper that said “Enrollment Blank for the California School of Screen Process,” a mail-order art school business my father and two uncles ran for a while in the late 1940s. I guess by the time of my birth the forms had become scratch paper and the school was no more. According to the Enrollment Blanks, their school offered a diploma, a 10 page booklet on how to conduct a profitable business and “10 individual, easy to read, simple to understand lessons that will give practical experience” along with a “Complete Kit of Supplies: Paints, silk, materials, photographic supplies, frame, squeegee, stencil knife, tacks, hinges…in fact, all the materials necessary to complete the course.” Fortunately they all went on to have very successful careers in their chosen professions.

Tags Pencil drawing, People

Drawing People Sketchbook Pages

Just me

Graphite (6B) in Aquabee 9×12 Sketchbook

Tonight was painting group and we couldn’t decide whether to pose for each other or just work on individual projects. I was tired and felt like sitting in one spot so I decided to try using a soft pencil and just draw myself. Like most self-portraits I’ve drawn, it’s not quite me, but almost.

Just for fun, after I thought I was all done, I decided to try adding watercolor. I printed the scanned drawing onto the same Aquabee sketchbook paper and then applied watercolor. The inkjet ink and paper seemed to resist the watercolor. It’s a little weird, but it was a fun experiment.

Watercolor over printed, scanned pencil drawing.

I was inspired to try the soft pencil sketching by France Belleville’s pencil drawings of Gunter Grass and her stepfather on her blog, Wagonized and Laura’s sketch of her father on Laurelines when I visited their blogs today. Laura has such a free, loose, but right-on stroke and France makes every little squiggley line shape and form the person’s features and personality.

I love knowing how much more there is to learn, since learning is my favorite thing in the whole world (when it’s something I want to learn–there are many lessons I would happily forego)! And it’s great knowing how much I’ve already learned, and how every bit of practice has helped my drawing and painting improve.

Tags Pencil drawing, People