Summer paint doodles

I hope everyone is having a great summer! The weather has been pretty intense this year, but we finally have a milder day today here in Toronto. (And of all days I am staying indoors to catch up on my digital stuff) :)

I painted these during a weekend at an adorable, quaint cottage in Owen Sound:

Found a small frog basking in the sun by the eddys in Niagara Falls:

Bumming around a playground:

flora

flora
black ballpoint pen + white china marker + red Col-Erase pencil on kraft paper, ~8.5x11"

Just something I did to loosen up a bit today. Ballpoint pen is probably my favourite tool. Though the permanence is a little unnerving at times, it's what helps loosen me up.

I didn't intend on draw another girl with glasses; but as she shaped up, she reminded me of those intellectual, sophisticated female types in video games that seem to always have glasses, hair neatly pulled to one side, and oversized breasts. 8D;;;

smoke

smoke
brown col-erase on paper, 11x14"
(another crummy photograph)

I've always had this problem of not being able to draw consistently, so I decided to try to draw a second image in the same style as "ibis". But this didn't work out so well. This girl looks so awkward, forced, and contrived. It didn't help that I grew tired of it and threw in a half-assed background... lol ;-;

So, in my quest to battle my inability to draw in a consistent style, my hope is to develop a series of drawings that follow the same style and theme. Perhaps I'll give this hair thing one more try...

ibis

ibis
brown Col-Erase pencil on paper, 11x14"
(The brown tinge and graininess resulted from my camera, but I rather like the effect and didn't bother changing camera settings. I will scan it properly eventually... so lazy now that my sketchbook is larger than my scanner...)

I think this drawing was the product of me shopping around for new glasses and looking on the Rasysa hairstyles website for a new hairstyle. :P

A piece done for myself?? That's rare nowadays, but I really need to motivate myself to draw more before September rolls around. Do kick me please. :D

Knees and failed caricatures! :P

Knees give me a really hard time, they're all bumpy and complicated. I'm not really happy with how I did the actual shading, so more practice is in store...


Graphite pencil & Prismacolor warm grey markers on paper, 8.5x11 in.

I also tried caricatures for the first time in my life and WOW is it ever hard! Also probably doesn't help that I tried it on myself first (and it doesn't look like me, really...), assuming it's easier to pick out defining features of a stranger, someone you haven't known for 20-some odd years. Also, I had no idea what to do with the body! I think I'll practice on politicians first or something...


Prismacolor warm grey markers + Staedtler watercolour pencils on paper, 8.5x11 in.

The extremities

So I finally sat down and did a hand and foot study last night, because these two body parts are definitely weaknesses of mine! I've been avoiding this practice... :(

I always end up making the body of the foot look like one flat surface, which of course it isn't. And fingers still get the better of me a lot of the time... More hands and feet in my future, that's for sure.