Tag: Drawing

Sketchbook Molesine, Techniques

Chill Mama

Featuredby Jane Hannah2 Comments on Chill Mama

For art and joy go together, with bold openness,
and high head, and ready hand — fearing nought and dreading no exposure.
— James Abbot McNeill Whistler

Forget everything I wrote about my scanner problems as I have resolved them. So here goes. Mac OS Ventura and Silverfast software 8.8 on my Epson Perfection V600 Scanner — which I love by the way. So I twiddled around with the settings and looked up info on Google. Hah! Who doesn’t do that nowadays? Anyway, I listened to one of the “specialists”. Argh! Everything that he mentioned was causing more problems than resolving them.

So yesterday I started tweaking the settings again and Eureka! Now everything is fine. Can’t believe it. Under “Preferences” –> CMS Input at Epson Perfection V600 –> Reflective –> Internal at EPSON sRGB. And that’s it. Everything is back to normal. So this is the image that I tested everything with.

This is my Chill Mama that started out as a tree and ended up as the Chill Mama. Sometimes I just let my brain and fingers do their own thing, without any guidance whatsoever. This can end in utter disaster, or just plain fun. For me, it was the latter.

Paper: Moleskine Sketchbook 5″x8″

Drawing, Painting, Watercolour

To have spunk…

Featuredby Jane HannahLeave a Comment on To have spunk…

“Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”
— (Frank Lloyd Wright)

Even though this dog is unknown to me, he has spunk! Like many small dogs that I know, they are fierce little creatures when taunted and show courage and determination. I like his badass attitude when painting, but I really do not enjoy when they constantly bark at you. LOL -) My own big Golden Retriever is nothing like this. He is soft, gentle, intelligent, never barks (or hardly) and is very affectionate. He is also getting very old, on our daily walks he lags behind and is walking very very slowly. I fear that not much time is left for our big guy.

Paper: Pentalic Sketchbook
Colours: [W&N] Yellow Ochre, [W&N] Payne’s Grey and [DS] Alizarin Crimson

Drawing

Just a little push…

Featuredby Jane HannahLeave a Comment on Just a little push…

I want to remind you that regardless of the turmoil you have in your life, or the errands, or daily tasks, it’s important that you stop and make a sketch, even if you only spend 10 minutes on it. That connection to your creativity will bring you back each day to your creativity. It will help you stay limber for those days when you might actually squeeze in an hour (gasp!)
— https://rozwoundup.com

Sometimes what you need is just a little push and you start doing it. I have been busy, yes busy, but not busy enough to stop drawing or painting as it fills your heart and purpose in life. So I just needed this little push and https://rozwoundup.com/ did it for me.

Here are some of her words, and I thank her.

So here is a dog that she painted that I drew, in gratitude.

Ink, Painting, Watercolour

Somewhere in Mexico…

Featuredby Jane Hannah2 Comments on Somewhere in Mexico…

The object of art is not to reproduce reality,
but to create a reality of the same intensity.
— Alberto Giacometti.

Here in Rigaud, Québec, Canada it snowed for the very first time yesterday and I woke up to a fairyland of white, fluffy, beautiful snow. The opposite of this painting from sunny Mexico! This is a typical Mexican scene, with the old cars, antennas, brightly coloured buildings and beautiful tiled roofs. It pays off to do the greyscale value thumbnails and the hue values also beforehand, even though today I did not respect my triad and went all out with many colours. The facade of the building is in Raw Sienna, but if I had to do it over, I would use Yellow Ochre which is an opaque colour with a bit of Q. Gold… it would make it livelier… but hey! I think that it is lively enough. Hope that you enjoy it. The sky is in a diluted Prussian Blue and it could have been a bit darker… but so much for that. It is finished, yeah!

Paper: Fabriano Artistico CP 140 lbs, 8″ x 8″
Colours: Mostly Hansa Light, Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna, Alizarin Crimson, Cobalt Blue, Prussian Blue
Fountain Pen: Platinum Carbon
Ink: De Atrramentis Document Black Ink.

Drawing, Ink

Prepping & Thinking

Featuredby Jane HannahLeave a Comment on Prepping & Thinking

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it,
and wiser than the one that comes after it.
George Orwell, taken from the wonderful Painter’s Keys website

Line drawing was just done for a friend, which I will soon be painting. The lead lines are for the shadows. Once the drawing is done, the excitement of adding colours begins. I am playing with Raw Sienna or Yellow Ochre, also French Ultramarine or Cobalt… hum… questions, questions…

Sketches / Drawings / Paintings

:: Wonky Friday Portrait ::

Featuredby Jane HannahLeave a Comment on :: Wonky Friday Portrait ::

I am crazy about two colours:
carmine and cobalt.
Cobalt is a divine colour and there is nothing so beautiful for creating atmosphere.
Carmine is as warm and lively as wine… the same with emerald green.
— Vincent van Gogh

This wonky Friday portrait is just what I needed… a bit of craziness during pandemic times. I am having so much fun with these portraits, and I was long overdue. Today I used a Zebra Brush Pen from Pilot that I bought at JetPens. Everything is written in Japanese on the pen, so I can’t really read what is written. It gives a thicker line that I usually use and gives it a caricature-like quality which goes well with the model that I chose.

Paper: Pentalic Aqua Journal 8″ x 5″
Watercolours: Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Q. Gold, Alizarin Crimson & Ultramarine
Pen: Zebra Brush Pen Fine LINK

Drawing, Ink

:: Moe’s Rusty Day ::

Featuredby Jane HannahLeave a Comment on :: Moe’s Rusty Day ::

Permit the brain to separate from the hand.
Soften your vision, focus beyond and before.
Allow yourself to be “entranced” by your work.
Feel a “process” rather than an outcome, and…
Live in the life of the brush, chisel, roller.
— Painter’s Keys

September 1st already and I am really not ready for autumn! After many months of not painting nor drawing, the deadline was today. So to get out of this artistic break as we might softly say, I decided to choose my most difficult challenge. Faces!!! I was never good at these, and I would like to be better, and with practice I know that I will, and that goes for everyone.

There are many flaws in this drawing, but especially in the painting values. They are all either too vibrant or too soft… it is a question of getting back into watercolours also, to test the value of the wash and know when I put down my brush it has the correct value. The proportions of the face are too long or not wide enough. The hues are not diverse enough, but hey! This is how we learn. To analyze what is wrong, and to rectify for the next painting. And persevere and move forward.

I have been following for years the “Queen” of drawing faces, and she is found here. You will see that she is quite amazing… makes it look so bloody easy -)))

Moe’s Haircut

Paper: Pentalic Aqua Journal 8″ x 5″
Watercolours
Fountain Pen: Pilot Namiki SEF
Ink: DeAtramentis Black Document Ink

Drawing, Ink, Sketches / Drawings / Paintings

:: Teleworking ::

by Jane HannahLeave a Comment on :: Teleworking ::

“All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.”
— Gabriel García Márquez

Here in Québec, elementary schools, high schools and daycare centres have been in lockdown since Monday March 16th… and most businesses too… but not College nor University teachers. We have been teleworking, quite hard I might say, on making sure that our students “can” do the work from the safety of their homes while progressing with their multiple courses. My third years have just started their 3-week Stage period by teleworking also. I know that students are anxious and can’t wait to meet up with their friends, but we have all told each other that we would never complain again of having to go back to school or work — hah-hah!

I have had to adjust and the first two weeks were very stressful, but now I am getting quite used to it. It is never as rewarding as being in the classroom with your students, but my days are passing without any major hurdles and I feel more relaxed as time seems to have slowed down… and sometimes it stops… and I can feel the rush of air… and I catch my breath and look up at the sky. No planes… only birds flying in and out, swirling in the air.

I took the time to draw this little old house from a picture on Pinterest that I found interesting and I have also registered for Shari Blaukopf’s online class, Mattias Adolfsson’s online class and a special class on Procreate with Roman Garcia Mora. Maybe that I overdid the classes thing, but there are great deals at the moment and it is always nice to learn… isn’t it?

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Paper: Hand•book journal co. 8″ x 8″
Ink: DeAtramentis Document Black
Namiki Fountain Pen SEF

Sketches / Drawings / Paintings

:: The Lost Words ::

by Jane Hannah4 Comments on :: The Lost Words ::

“Once Upon a time, words began to vanish from the language of children. They disappeared so quietly that at first almost no one noticed – fading away like water on a stone. The words were those that children used to name the natural world around them: acorn, adder, bluebell, bramble, conker – gone! Fern, heather, kingfisher, otter, raven, willow, wren…all of them gone! The words were becoming lost: no longer vivid in children’s voices, no longer alive in their stories.”

I have a book at home called The Lost Words and it is a gorgeous spell book. This is the excerpt on the back sleeve. “…When the most recent edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary was published, a sharp-eyed reader soon noticed that around forty common words concerning nature had been dropped. Acorn, adder, bluebell, dandelion, fern, heron, kingfisher, newt, otter and willow. The words were no longer being used enough by children to merit their place in the dictionary. The list of these lost words were replaced by attachment, blog, broadband, bullet-point, cut-and-paste, and voice-mail. The news of these substitutions — the outdoor and natural being displaced by the indoor and virtual — became seen by many as a powerful sign of the growing gulf between childhood and the natural world. In response, Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris set out to make a “spell book” that would conjure back twenty of these lost words, and the beings they name, from acorn to wren. By the magic of word and paint, they sought to summon these words again into the voices, stories and dreams of children and adults alike, and to celebrate the wonder and importance of everyday nature….”

If you are interested in reading more about this beautiful book here is a link. So with this in mind, one of the sketches that I will be asking my students to complete will be creating an acrostic poem and drawing its being for a “lost” natural being that they could not part with in this world… I chose a tree -)))

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Fountain Pen: Pilot Falcon SEF
Ink: De Atramentis Document Black
Paper: Moleskine Sketchbook Art Plus Large

Sketches / Drawings / Paintings

:: 18 emojis ::

by Jane HannahLeave a Comment on :: 18 emojis ::

“Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.”
C. Northcote Parkinson, British scholar

I have been prepping in a kind of a frenzy these last few days as I procrastinated this summer… too well for my liking and habits — hah-hah! I promised myself that I will do as I usually do and start prepping once my final grades are in next May.

For my drawing class I have been teaching different sketching techniques hoping that the majority of my students catch one technique that they will aspire to. Well I have to admit that almost 50% of the students can’t see or apply the different techniques and seem to draw in the same manner as they were taught when they were very young.

So with the help of a very old drawing book by Pranks, I decided to try something new. Learn from the masters by replicating what they are seeing! I myself have been astonished by what I have learned over the years with this technique — quite a revelation. So I am giving it a go for this semester and hope that this might ease some student anxiety over the “blank” page and help them to start drawing.

My first exercise is to see their creativity by getting them to draw 18 different Emojis in their sketchbook… a way for me to look into their creativity and imagination levels! I had fun drawing these and I will be painting them too a bit later on…

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Fountain Pen: Pilot Falcon SEF
Ink: De Atramentis Document Black Ink
Paper: Moleskine Sketchbook 5″x8″