Face Time

In my determination to learn how to sketch people, I have read several books that have given me good training suggestions. I am especially interested in faces and expressions. Here are a few of the faces from the last couple of months.

Koh-I-Noor Tri-Tone pencil on Canson Black Paper

The book "How to Draw People" by Jeff Mellem advocates drawing a face map. Visualize a balloon with a rubber band around the equator to place the eye zone. The bottom of the nose is half way between the equator and the bottom of the balloon and the mouth is halfway between the nose and the chin at the bottom of the balloon.

I didn't get the map quite right, but the hypothetical child still looks better than my previous attempts.

Faces are very striking on black toned paper with metallic pencils. I love the way the eyes stand out. (Spectrum Noir metallic pencils and Canson Black paper).

The left face is Donnie, one of my grandcats. On the right are Sam and Ben faces. Below is baby Sam sketched from a photo.

One book with step by step instructions on drawing eyes is "Figure It Out! Simple Lessons, Quick Results" by Christopher Hart. The book's emphasis is on cartoon type figures, but the instructions on eyes have been helpful when drawing from photos. Here is a page of my notes from this book.

Another tooth bites the dust!
Exceed journal paper, colored pencils

And my latest sketch, from my bullet journal, of Sam, who is losing teeth.

Life changes

This month has meant upheaval for me. I am expecting new housemates in December. This will be for our mutual benefit, they need an affordable place to stay and I could use help with housing expenses. This house is twice the space that I need to live, but nature abhors a vacuum. In the last four years the three spare rooms have filled up with books, fabric, sewing machines, and yarn. Now I am reorganizing the entire house to empty those rooms and move materials to my remaining space. That is a good thing, but time consuming.

Painting walls gave me the thought that I would like to paint one wall with a dark blue paint that I bought cheap and paint jellyfishes in pink on top of the blue. Sam and I have practiced sketching jellyfish for that effort. The blue paper that I made some Inktober sketches on makes a good background for pink jellyfish.

Moon Jelly- colored pencils and ink on Blue Cartridge paper

I love this blue paper. It was a gift and has no labels to tell me where it was produced. The only label says "A5  cartridge ex col" over a bar code. A5 is the size, and cartridge is what drawing paper is termed in Britain and Europe. This paper has a enough tooth to use with pencils, but is thick enough so there is no bleed-through with any of the fountain pen inks I've used. I also have seen no feathering with fountain pen inks. Toned and colored papers are great fun! I am trying to figure out where to get more of this blue.

Sam's jellyfish and school pick-up practice
Blue Cartridge Paper and graphite pencil

When picking up my granddaughter at school, I try to practice figure sketching. However, children don't even hold a pose for 5 seconds, let alone 30 seconds! So I am reducing my practice to faces and hairstyles.

On a sad note, we lost Paris hamster last night. Her decline was sudden and unexpected. Sydney continues to be lively, but unfortunately, hamsters (like all small rodents) don't live long. The average lifespan is 2 years, but Sydney and Paris are just over 1 year old. I have no guess as to why Paris died.

Travel time

Last month I spent a week with my sister in the Sacramento area. She has a lovely yard and chickens. Although it was hot, in the 90s, I enjoyed sitting on her patio to sketch the yard and watch the Black Throated hummingbirds. The hummers were too quick for me to sketch, but the chickens were fun!

Sister's backyard. Watercolor pencils on Canson XL 140lb paper

Detail study of ornamental grass and yard art.
watercolor pencils and brush pen with green ink.

We are both enabling influences on each other. Her favorite store is Tuesday Morning, a discount store that has a craft supply area. We have found bargains on high end yarn and knitting needles in the past. This time it was colored pencils! I brought home two sets of Spectrum Noir pencils, a set of 12 metallics and a set of 24 Aquablend water color pencils for $7 and $12 respectively. What a deal! Spectrum Noir watercolor pencils are sold in sets of 24 with a color theme to each set. The set I got is the floral theme. So no greens, but a range of reds, oranges, blues and a couple yellows. The pencils are rich and creamy, easily activated with water, but a little crumbly. We also picked up some Canson black paper, which makes the metallics pop!

Yixing teapot
Spectrum Noir Metallic pencils
Canson Black Drawing paper.

Journals sketched with Spectrum Noir Aquablend pencils.
Badfish Coffee, fude pen and brush pen with green inks.

I drink only decaf coffee, so taste is critical. Starbucks and other large coffee vendors have increasingly limited decaf options. I am always looking for small batch roasted decaf at local coffee shops. We hit two in my sister's area and bought single varietal decaf beans. Cold-brew is all the rage but I've never seen decaf cold-brew. We tried cold-brewing the two different beans I had purchased at home. Wow!! It was so good, even my sister said she could switch to decaf. I took the opportunity to do some sketches at the coffee shop.

San Diego airport, Hero fude pen.

Sacramento Airport, Fude nib pen.

Last time I flew, I used the time in the airport to knit a pair of socks. This time, I did some quick gesture sketches of people sitting around me. One in San Diego, one in Sacramento. Quick people sketches that give the essence of their activity or attitude is one of the skills I would love to build. Practice, practice!

On pine trees and pinecones

The smell of pine trees takes me back to childhood and walking in the pine plantings that dot the landscape in rural Michigan. There are several large pine trees in the community park from which I get my pine fix. They also furnish pine cones for use in my little rocket stove. I have never identified the species (that is very important to my inner science geek), so I decided to sketch the bark, needles, and  pine cones as a reminder to me when I get around to looking up a pine tree key. I haven't done that yet, so can't say the species, but the practice has been interesting.

The pine cones have been sitting in the middle of my table, so I keep coming back and trying different media in an attempt to make them look better. The pattern is a Fibonacci sequence that looks deceptively simple.

First, I did a couple of quick sketches.

Fude nib pen and ink on
Blick mixed media paper, 80lb. 

Koh-I-Noor Tri-tone pencils and Noodler's Lexinton Grey ink.
Blick mixed media, 80lb. paper

I wasn't really satisfied with these sketches, so did a more detailed sketch. That took more than an hour. Too long! I came to notice the mountain like details of the individual scales and began sketching from that angle.

Faber-Castell water colour pencils (student grade)
Blick mixed media 80lb. paper

Finally, tried using black paper to provide the shading and did two 15 minute sketches. I have been having fun with the effects on this black paper. The right sketch was done first with my new Spectrum Noir metallic pencils. They lay down smooth and show up well on black paper, but must be sharpened frequently to keep a point. So I tried the sketch on right with a Prismacolor Col-erase blue pencil, which seems very hard when I am trying to use it to put in light lines on mixed media paper. After I finished the sketch, I remembered the pencil is "copy not", meaning it is not supposed to photocopy! So I colored two scales with metallic pencil in case the blue didn't show up. It did.

15 minute pine cone sketches with Prismacolor Col-erase pencil on left
Spectrum Noir Metallic pencils on right. Canson 92lb. black drawing paper.

Here is what the pine cone is supposed to look like.

iPhone picture of the unidentified pine tree pine cone, including a pine nut.

The trees have little clumps of needles coming out of the side of the large trunks.

Pine needles. Graphite and colored pencil.
Strathmore 300 sketch paper.

iPhone picture of pine. I started sketching on site,
then finished from the picture after my feet went numb.