Sometimes I Need To Draw A Frog

Strawberry poison dart frog

Hi there how are you?

This week I have mostly been drawing frogs.
I was sitting here looking at my sketchbook thinking “I don’t know what to draw” unfortunately that is not a good way to learn to draw, so I drew frogs.

Looking through images of frogs on the inter-webs I found a little frog called a strawberry poison dart frog, very pretty and also extremely deadly.

Strawberry poison dart frogs

It doesn’t happen often but sometimes I get that brain freeze that stops me in my tracks and keeps me staring at the white page.

There are ways around this;
sometimes I just slap paint all over the page and eureka no white page.
Using different tools, pens coloured pencils etc. can also work,
and sometimes I just need to kick myself up the backside and draw frogs hehehe.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by today. Till next time, have fun x

Strawberry poison dart frog ribbit

 

 

 

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Pansies – Need To Draw Them fast The Slugs are coming!

Watercolour sketch of pansies

 

Hello peeps how are you?

The garden flowers this year grew and died so quickly and all the colours are fading fast. Pansies are in the garden centres and they are so cheerful to look at I really feel the need to bring them home.

They were all planted in pots around the garden and really do make me happy as they wave in the breeze smiling back at me.

Suddenly there are little notches taken out of the leaves and flower heads missing, the slugs have found them eep!
I decided I had better draw them fast before they turn into little pots of stalks!

The first picture above is of a pansy and a viola. I have to say that the little viola is my favourite out of all of these, it almost painted itself and I managed to get the colours really close to the real flower.

Next I painted lots of pansy heads, all of the colours immortalised in my sketchbook for all time. I had bought a box of mixed colours so hopefully my pots will be a riot of colours throughout the autumn (providing the slugs don’t eat them first that is.)

Watercolour sketch of pansies heads

 

This little viola is painted on a watercolour postcard; the card was hiding in the back of my sketch book, and I was interested to see the difference in the colours to the sketchbook pansies.

Postcard of watercolour pansies

 

Below are pansy doodles drawn whilst watching TV, testing myself to see if I could remember the shapes, they’re outlined with a brush pen, almost cartoony really.

More watercolour pansies and heads

 

I hope you enjoyed a peek these happy little flowers and also that they last a little longer. If it means running around the garden in the dark with a torch picking the rotten things off, It will be worth it for a bit more colour.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by today. Till next time, have fun x

 

 

Wolves, More Lessons

Wolf head sketch coloured in watercolour side view

 

Hi there how are you?

Last week I was drawing foxes from the Aaron Blaise course “how to draw wolves’ coyotes and foxes” I had started at the end with foxes because I think they’re cute but felt I was missing something.

At the beginning, in the wolf section he covered bone structure, muscles, legs and feet. I was missing feet! (All those little toes and pads.)This is what I get for starting at the end of the course!

Wolf head sketch coloured in watercolour

I started with the head, he was drawing digitally using a photo of the skull to draw around and show where everything was in relation to the skull. I should have printed one out it would have been a great help, instead I winged it meh.

I drew everything with a red crayola pencil (not so easy to rub out) you can still see the pencil here and there in the two water-coloured heads.

Wolf gesture sketches 1

I drew along with the video stopping it when I fell behind. There’s certainly a lot of information to take in here and although at the moment I’m using it for wolves and foxes it’s also going to be useful for drawing other animals too, lots of animals have similar bone structure.
The wolf gestures are a bit cartoonish, I’d expect that since he is a big animator and Disney artist.

I haven’t gotten around to colouring them in yet, or maybe I’ll draw them again with a graphite pencil and tidy them up a little.

Wolf gesture sketches 2

They’re a lot of fun to draw, if I can pack all of this information into my head I may be able to draw some wolves of my own, I’m going to need some reference though.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by today. Till next time, have fun x

Drawing Foxes

Fox sketch standing coloured with watercolour

Hi there how are you?

More foxes but this week I’ve been drawing them. I bought a course by Aaron Blaize. The lessons are all drawn digitally but he does it in a way that you can easily follow along with a pencil and paper. The course is called “how to draw wolves’ coyotes and foxes”. If you follow the last link you can find a free peek at the course where he shows how to draw a wolf. Or watch his youtube channel (no affiliation, just fun stuff)

Since I had been painting tiny fox gestures last week I started at the end with the foxes.

Fox gestures in watercolour

They were all drawn in my sketchbook with a red crayola colouring pencil, it’s difficult to rub out and they are nice and soft to draw with. I just drew along with him, listening to the commentary  correcting as I went along, no rubbing out so they were quite scribbly.

Sketch of a fox sitting painted with gouache

The top pictures were painted with watercolour, you can’t really tell in the picture but the pencil still shows through. To try to hide the lines I painted the last two pictures with gouache and outlined them with a brush pen.

I normally use watercolour with my drawings I find gouache quite difficult to use, it’s  thicker and flows less so the colours don’t mix on the paper but it worked well to hide the pencil marks.

If I was using watercolour paper I would transfer the image with tracing paper eliminating the need to hide the lines at all.

Fox sniffing close to the ground in gouache

Aaron Blaise made this quite easy, talking through his thought process and showing why he made the choices he did. Next step is to draw from some photos without help, see if I can do it on my own.

I would try to draw from life but the foxes around here are very shy and only come out at night.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by today. Till next time, have fun x

Practising Brush Strokes

Foxes painted with brush strokes

Hi there how are you?

I saw some video of foxes jumping into the snow to catch rodents to eat, it had me mesmerised so when I saw pictures of them doing the same thing I decided to paint them. They are quite tiny (roughly 2 or 3 cm in size)  I was trying to paint them with as few brush strokes as possible.

I have some new paint brushes to try out and this was the perfect project to try them and out see what kinds of marks I could make.

New rosemary’s brushes

I’d heard about Rosemary’s Brushes and wanted to try them for a while. I bought a #6 series 33 and a #5 series 22. The beauty of this company is they give precise sizes of their brushes in millimetres; I picked these two brushes because the ferrules are similar sizes but the bristles on series 22 are longer. They are both sable.

Not sure which I prefer yet I’ll have to do more painting to work it out but I like the way these little foxes turned out.

The top brush in the picture is a #8 sable/synthetic blend travel brush. The handle comes off and the brush fits inside. I love it, haven’t taken it outside yet but it has a good point. Holds plenty of paint and makes some very nice brush strokes.

At the zoo yesterday, we decided to check out the greenhouses. They’re not huge but they have plenty of tropical plants in there and they are open to the public.

Normally we draw the orchids but for a change we drew cactus. The first is a view from the top of a cactus that hasn’t flowered yet. The second is a cactus that had flowered and was now growing round, bright red seed pods on the top. I love cactus, they are one of the few plants I seem able to grow!

Drawing cactus at the zoo

Half an hour in the greenhouse was enough; it was very humid and hot.
I held the book in front of the cactus I had drawn like some plein air artists do just for fun and instagramed it hehehe

Thanks for taking the time to stop by today. Till next time, have fun x

Puffins

Sketch of puffin going off to feed it’s chick

 

Hi there how are you?

Last week I finished world watercolour month. One of the last pictures I had painted was of two little puffins together on a grassy hill. I really enjoyed painting them and wanted to draw a few more.

Sketch of a Puffin

They look like a cross between a parrot and a penguin with the saddest eye markings (people call them ‘clowns of the sea’). They are so interesting to look at and I love the way they walk, plodding along.

I drew one or two larger drawings and then filled a few pages with some smaller studies, just trying to work out the shapes.

Sketch book page of four puffins

They seem surprisingly graceful in the air with a longer wingspan than I thought and are very good at diving for fish.

Sketches of flying puffins

 

There are puffins in the UK. The ones living on the cliffs Anglesey in Wales would be closest to us or even Skomer Island in Pembrokeshire. Who knows we may need to take a trip there sometime.

It’s been a lot of fun drawing all of these little puffins

Thanks for taking the time to stop by. Till next time, have fun x

World Watercolour Month – Final Week

Hi there, how are you?
This is the final week for world watercolour month 2018.

For details you can check out Mr Doodlewash’s page here, donations of art stuff’s and money can still be given through the links found there.

Throughout the month I had missed a few days but wanted to finish the challenge properly so I completed the last two or three at the beginning of August.

Lavender – I liked the idea of this one but the drawing let it down (more practice needed)

Lavender looking a little misty

Californian poppies – we we’re back from holiday and I was sure these would have all gone to seed but no! Amazingly they were still flowering away, I’ll save some seeds and hope for more next year.

Californian poppies

Penguins – I had a random idea for penguins in my sketchbook as I knew that would be the theme for pinch punch post (a monthly twitter challenge )so I used it for both challenges, kind of a two-fer.

Humboldt penguins for pinch punch post and world watercolour month

Flamingos – it was our wedding anniversary so I wanted to paint something romantical to use on a card. I had a few ideas (see next two posts) I ended up using the flamingos because the shape of the necks resembled a heart.

The card I made with the flamingos watercolour

Seahorses – I drew two (see #4 above) I kept it to three colours to stop it getting too muddy and painted it wet in wet. I love how the colours wicked into each other on this one.

Two seahorses entwined

Puffins – I’ve wanted to draw puffins for a while and really enjoyed painting this one.

Puffins in love.

Pigeon – I had a picture left over for ideas and he was so cute. This was #32, I painted it while I was painting the puffins because I could see myself starting to fiddle and I didn’t want to spoil it so free extra pigeon hehe.

Quirky pigeon

So, world watercolour month has finished for another year and this time I managed all of it whoop whoop!
Looking back I can see some didn’t live up to the idea in my head, the idea was OK but the execution was poor.

Getting used to the paper was interesting; from week three I have been using cold press 100% cotton paper. It’s quite a leap and I think I will need a lot more practice with it before I feel comfortable using it.
I have some pages left in the little booklet I made and another empty one made up so I will persevere.

Things to work on: I need to work on colour mixing in general but particularly greens; I managed to make some real poke in the eye acid greens (not the effect I was going for).

Colours are brighter and clearer on this paper so I need to take note of that and learn to mute them down a bit in some places.

All in all I have enjoyed this challenge a lot; I can see arty improvements are being made slowly whoot!

Click on the links below to check out previous weeks
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Congratulations to everybody who took part in any way, more arting has to be a good thing and it was all for a good cause. Also I would like to thank every one for all of the support, encouragement and kindness along the way.

I’m definitely looking forward to the next one.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by today. Till next time, have fun x

World Watercolour Month Fourth Week

And we’re back! Hi there, how are you?

Holidays over, the weather was fantastic and hot, very hot. We stayed in a small farm cottage for the week. There was a small garden with flowers, hollyhocks, sweet peas, also geese, goat’s chickens and two horses. The horses were also holidaying there.

We’ve seen monkey world, Stonehenge, castles, beaches, and investigated the small town of Shaftesbury (a lovely town with fantastic views over the local hills)

There are a few paintings missing from the week’s daily paintings. There wasn’t always time to get the paints out, too much gallivanting don’t cha know hehehe.

Kingfisher – love kingfishers and the photo looked so cute.

Hummingbird sitting on a twig

sweet peas – the owner of our cottage filled a small vase with sweet peas so I had to try a painting.

Watercolour painting of sweet peas

Goose – this is one of three geese that were wandering around the grounds.

Watercolour painting of a goose

Daisies – at the edge of the paddock wild daisies were growing so I painted a few.

Watercolour painting of daisies

Hollyhocks – these were growing around the house. In the evening before the sun set we sat in the garden drawing and painting

Watercolour painting of hollyhocks

I know the official challenge finishes in a few days but I plan on finishing the rest up next week, seems a shame not to complete the challenge.

We’re all back to normal now, lots to catch up on, the app on my ipod gave out after a couple of days so I haven’t been able to respond to comments or even see the amazing art your all producing. I’ll catch up over the next few days.

Want to know what #worldwatercolourmonth is all about click here to go to doodlewash’s page for details of what, why and where to donate if you want to.

Thanks for taking the time to stop by today. Till next time, have fun x