Currently Browsing: Drawing From Life 126 articles
Stonehenge Aqua Review Part 5—A Look at the Hot Press Surface
This is part 5 of a multi-part review of Stonehenge Aqua cold press and hot press. Please see this link for the first post in the series. Hot press paper is my paper of choice, so I’m going to spend more time testing a new hot press paper than I am testing a cold press […]
Online Class: “Drawing Practice” Registration Opens Today
Registration for “Drawing Practice: Drawing Live Subjects in Public” opens today. (Click on the link to read about it and register.) Pre-class information will be available to all registered students immediately upon registration so that you can begin to set your goals and organize your time. (See below for a link to the supply PDF […]
Hair Cuts and Their Aftermath
Nope I didn’t have a hair cut. I still have my braids. Periodically I give CR a hair cut. He’s too frail now for me to load him into the car and take him to the female barber I found for him, and whom he grew to enjoy. Now he has me. After the hair […]
The Daily Potato: A Look at a Daily Drawing Project
At the end of September 2018 Jennifer Okano brightened everyone’s day by posting this wonderfully dimensional sketch of a sweet potato in a group I host for past students. She wrote: This month my focus has been on contours. Outside, inside, cross. Picking the oddest Japanese sweet potatoes at the market has given me a […]
Sketching at the Dentist’s
There’s no excuse not to have a sketchbook with you at all times. I’ve made sketchbooks as small as 2 x 4 inches. They fit nicely into a pocket if you aren’t carrying a purse or bag. And now so many commercially bound books are available in small sizes, including the Hahnemühle Watercolor Book, which […]
Roz’s 2018 Minnesota State Fair Journal
Today’s gallery contains all the pages of my 2018 Minnesota State Fair Journal. This year I was able to attend on three days. There are sections indicating the start of each new day, and stating which day was the sketch out (I could only attend one of the sketch out days). I worked on 300 […]
In Context: Not the Time To Explain a Vignette
As an artist, you know whether it’s the right time to introduce the concept of “vignettes” or not. Pick your battles.
Check Out My Article in Artists Magazine January/February 2019
A couple months ago I was asked to write a piece about sketching in the snow for Artists Magazine. (That link takes you to their subscription and individual issue purchase page. I’m in the January/February 2019 issue.) My copies arrived a couple days ago. The issue includes my 4-page article with 9 helpful tips on sketching […]
Why Drawing Matters
Drawing matters for a number of reasons. Last week I had a note from a past student who had recently lost her mother. The student had stopped drawing for months. Grief disrupts life in a thousand ways. When I was writing to her I was thinking about my own maternal loss this year, the death […]
In Context—Just for the Fun of Feeling the Paper
I was having so much fun with this sketch on real watercolor paper, that I forgot to write down the date and time on the page! That’s a lot of fun. I started working late one night in one of the 9 x 11 inch watercolor journals I bound last fall. It contains Fabriano Artistico […]