Currently Browsing: drawing practice 17 articles
Physical Therapy for Your Art Practice
I suggest to my Drawing Practice students that they do a six-week plan and goal setting session at the end of class; and that they repeat that every six weeks for the rest of their lives. Knowing what our goals are, and seeing how we executed our plans, helps us realign our strategy for going […]
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 […]
John Ruskin: The Father of Modern Sketchbook Practice
Tuesday in a Facebook group I belong to someone asked: “Which country originated the practice of the sketchbook?” Group members, myself included, got sidestepped into discussionsof what was a sketchbook, and the history of bookmaking, and I even looked into the Oxford English Dictionary and an online dictionary to see when the word “sketchbook” went […]
2018 Drawing Practice—Drawing Live Subjects in Public
All my life, one of the most exciting, energizing, and simply fun experiences I’ve enjoyed has been while I’m sketching live animals. It doesn’t matter if I’m at home with a dog visitor (we don’t have live in models any more) or out and about in the field checking out wild turkeys or walking around […]
In Context—Pumpkins
I really enjoy the fall because there are so many pumpkins around to sketch. I love playing with angle of where I’m sitting and how the pumpkin is turned because it can look so different. Mostly pumpkins give me an excuse to move the brush pen across the page. If you don’t have much time […]
Project Friday—Improving Your Drawing Practice with Repetition, the Right Tool, Being Invested, and Celebration
Above: Practice sketches in a 6 x 8 inch journal using a thick, soft, solid, fiber-tipped black brush pen and Montana Marker (background) as well as a large, fat-leaded Lyra metallic pencil. I’m feeling around to sense the nuance in the pose, the angle of the eyes, the negative space that first attracted me, to […]
Artist’s Sketchbook—A New Book on Sketching from Cathy Johnson
Left: Cover of the Artist's Sketchbook. Click on the image to view an enlargement. The publication of a new painting or sketching book from Cathy Johnson is always an happy and exciting event for me. Johnson is one of my art heroes. Like many other artists I was first aware of her work through her how-to-articles […]
Project Friday: Just Get Something Down on Paper
Above: Selfie made with bold Uni Posca pen (orange, the tip is about 1/4 inch wide) and a Sakura Pigment Medium Brush Pen (solid tip). The drawing is in a 9 x 12 inch Dylusions journal—which I cannot recommend for structural reasons specific to how I work. I'm sorry, but when I've worked in it […]
Tools and Subject Matter—Over a Life of Sketching
Above: A 10 minute sketch using a carbon-black ink felt-tipped brush pen sketch of Dick in the TV Room—focusing on Contours after a wearing day. Background: Montana marker. 9 x 12 inch Fabriano Venezia Journal page spread. (If you can't read the text, you can see a typed version at the end of this post.) […]
Teaching Drawing: Why Demonstrate Different Media?
Above: Sakura Pigma BB (Bold Brush) Pen sketch of Dick sitting in the TV room, with purple washes of watercolor. (Orange is a Montana Marker—I didn’t put it together properly after refilling it, so it leaked.) In a 9 x 12 inch Fabriano Venezia journal. The Sakura Pigma BB is a felt-tipped brush pen, so […]