Quick Nose Sketches

It's been a busy week, so while in bed about to crash, I got out my sketch pad and all I had was an ink pen, so I did a couple of quick sketches... I'll just use the excuse of being very tired and ready for bed.... Still good practice for me, even though sloppy and quick....

A Little Break from Noses

I took a little break from noses to do some quick sketches. Anita Davies turned me onto these through her blog (see links to artists' blogs) at the posemaniacs site. They give you a figure to draw and it's only there for 30 seconds. No time to stress about details. It's an exercise to engage the right side of the brain to tune out details and draw shapes....or something like that. Anyway, it's a great exercise that I'll continue (just won't post them here...too many in too short a time).

Day 6 The Noses of "Scrubs"

Scrubs is the funniest show on TV for me and I love the characters. And feeling this way, the logical next step for a true fan is...

...you guessed it! DRAWING THEIR NOSES! I'm sure they'll get ahold of this blog and be offering me commissions to draw more of their noses.

While I'm sure noses have "personality", it's not the defining trademark of most people, and for women in television, since they all have to be traditionally "pretty", there aren't a lot a variations on theirs... one looks far too much like the next.

John McGinleys is the most interesting nose, and I had a hard time stopping at the nose (as you can see) as I wanted to keep going. His is just an interesting face with lots of lines and shadows.

All of these were drawn with the Pilot Razor pen.

30 Days of Noses - Day 5

Day 5

I wanted to try a water-soluable ink pen,
so I pulled out a Pilot Razor Point (felt tip?) and
the first nose at top was me trying to figure out
how this pen works and how it would react to water.

The second nose is from a picture of my dad as a teen,
and then I tried a couple of celebrities like Tom Selleck
and Jimmy Durante (one is known for his nose and
the other is...well... I just love lookin' at him! Yep,
that Jimmy was the stuff that sweet dreams are made of...)

30 Days of Noses - Day 4

Day 4


Softer, pencil drawings like these don't render well when scanning, but these will at least be evidence to Sherie (http://papermoon-phthalo.blogspot.com/ )that I'm not falling down on the challenge (she'll harrass me mercilessly otherwise! lol)

The pencil sketch on the right is actually my nose... I was looking up into a mirror, so more nostril-action that I think is attractive... The other is from a picture of my daughter when she was little...the width was too wide, but the colored pencils I used (that I found in an old, old stash at my mom's) just would not erase. Maybe I'll go ahead and use pen for one and see how that goes.

Speaking of pen, you have to see what this guy does with just a bic pen a white art pencil: http://youtube.com/watch?v=9qJ8gKk6V8c

30 Days of Noses - #3

Day 3

Today I used drawing pencil and watercolor pencils (used dry) to create the shadows. Maybe tomorrow I'll tackle a self-nose-portrait (now THAT'LL takes guts!)

30 Days of Noses - Day 1 - 2

"Thirty Days of Noses"

My good friend and fab artist, Sherie Griffith, (http://papermoon-phthalo.blogspot.com/ ) we spending an art day together and were talking about a fellow artist's blog (Anita Davies) whom we know from the Everyday Matters (yahoo) group. Her artwork is incredible and she has spent 30 days drawing different parts of the body to get proficient and it has paid off for her.

Sherie and I decided we would do this together to help each other stay accountable to creating art every day in some fashion. Sherie wanted to start with noses, so here are my first 2 days of noses. The hardest part of this 30-challenge will be scanning and updating my blog... (my weakest area, I'm afaid)...

Art Journaling

This is my new love/learning method/therapy. I'm using a wire bound journal with cardstock weight pages. Sometime I scribble some thoughts first, then Gesso or paint over them to begin forming a collage, not so much to go with the words as just to go with my mood of the day... Sometime I focus on certain colors, or collage a bunch of pieces of paper that have been left on my table from other collage projects. It's fun to give myself a little challenge to use certain things.

I like to try out different styles and mediums of art, and it's fun to just play and give myself permission to make a mess and call it "art" if I want. This has been some of my best-spent time in my studio lately, freeing up my creative "muse" and I love the feel of the book as it gets filled up. This journal started out with glueing pictures and words on pages to convey feelings and thought, but now it's more collage and paint and I've entered a folk art/whimsical period that I'm really enjoying. (These two pages face each other in my journal).

I loved this little red-haired gal. This page (actually 2-page spread) started with a huge, painted mouth on a red background with the words "lips" stencilled at the bottom. I began collaging papers and paint over it, leaving some exposed areas and then worked on this little figure over top of everything else. She's a favorite.

The page on left began as a collage on "fashion" and ended up with a perplexed looking figure and I think that's my view toward being "fashionable". I'd rather buy art supplies!




Right: I collaged a scene on a painted background, added some stamping, printed tissue, sticker butterfly wings and a pic of myself when I was cute... I mean "young".

This one started out as a travel theme as I was really wanting to get away from it all. When I was finished, I was reminded of Anne of Green Gables. It has collaged papers and some painted Gesso over top and I've made swirls and loops through the Gesso while wet for added "texture" and interest.

I'll post more later and show you a page in progress and how it looks at different stages. This one at right is a page I Gessoed over and began again and got to this point. Since this photo was taken, I've painted in the figure a bit. I'll post an update later.

That's what is fun about art journaling...there are no rules. You can go back and change anything you don't like or just re-work something because you feel like it. On this one I added a dress, some color to the figure and an angel standing behind and over her with her arms wrapped around here, bringing peace... Come back later to see the updated version.

Now, go create in your own journal... use whatever book you have and cheap craft store paints. Doesn't have to be fancy, just a little paint or other medium of choice, some glue and pens... go have fun and please write and share a link to your journal if you have one...

2006 - early 2007

Okay...this is terrible and why I've always had a love/hate relationship with Diaries and Journals. It's been almost a year since my last post. It's not that I haven't done anything, but with ownership of a coffeeshop in my life now and another love/hate relationship, this time with my scanner, it just wasn't a great year for sharing my artventures.

So, here's my shot at redemption. I'll post some things I've done this last year. They won't be in order because my memory ain't that good any more and my documentation skills are in even worse shape than my memory.

Now...where was I? Oh yeah, some sketches, finished pieces and my ever-so-enlightening commentary along the way. How's that? .........

This is Walker... our neighbor whom Peggy & I babysat several times, but who is moving to Texas.. a sweet boy we'll miss!

I've done some quick sketches...lots of marks and movements. These are hard for me as they require me to let go and lose the desire for "picture-perfect", and to just learn from the exercise itself...not aim for a finished product.

This is my daughter, Peggy...

This is Meryl, singing at the coffeeshop...it's hard for me to draw folks who are moving..just not that good yet.

This is a famous hockey player (I think)...he was on the cover of my son's Hockey magazine. An exercise in loose sketching.




I wanted to do a loose Dizzy & his trumpet sketch from memory, just to get the outline and stance...

Some facial studies...

Another of Peggy from a photo.

A good resource for working on faces is a Mary Kay catalog:

Magazine photos... I didn't finish the one on the left... just couldn't seem to "get" her, so I got frustrated and stopped.

This is an abstract portrait of my dad... it's framed and hanging in my Dining Room... he was a colorful character, so this style fit his image well..

UPSIDE DOWN:

To release my mind from what I think a face is "supposed" to look like, I tried this exercise of turning the photo upside and drawing it upside down. Both the woman and Luke Wilson were drawn upside down. They're not perfect, but a decent likeness.

LEFT - My niece, Amy, though the eyes aren't really her....actually, only the hair may be really "her".

RIGHT - This is another niece and her dog, Bella... a pretty good likeness of her, I think.

TODAY - I did this sketch from a portrait in a magazine

This is the finished portrait of my grandmother that I gave my mom (pictured here) for Christmas '06. She told me later that she has really enjoyed it and thought I did a great job capturing her. High praise, indeed, so I'm tickled..

Now to just make time for continuing to work on my skills. Having recently started a part-time job in addition to homeschooling and try to sell a house (i.e. cleaning more often than I normally would! lol), I'm finding it hard to carve out time. If the family could manage to stay well more than a week or two at a time, that might help as well. I know there are always "seasons" for things, and the house will sell and I will eventually have an even better "studio" area in which to create (hopefully!), so for now I'll just "hang on" and sketch and create where I can.

These "cartoon" portraits were an idea I had that I wanted to try. They are my kids and they are now hanging in my husband's office at work. It was fun to do something light and colorful and reminiscent of my coloring book days.