Moving to colored sketches (watercolour)

And here is the transition to colour sketches! The first one in on watercolor paper the others on ordinary sketch book.

Grey sketches in the transition phase!

I went on a family vacation to Coorg and Kabini in Karnataka where I could paint leisurely for 2/3 hours everyday. This allowed me to experiment a bit and I tried Paynes Grey watercolors first (see painting 4 above) and then a bit of color in a grey sketch (see painting 3) above. When I moved from Coorg to Kabini I moved completely to coloured sketches. So these were some of the final grey sketches during this transition. The last one is from Pune and the others are from Coorg. Kabini sketches will follow in the next post. Hope you like these!

Grey and colour - two examples (watercolor)

Here are another two examples where I did grey sketches first and colored versions later.

Some portraits/sketches for a change! (Pencil)

Outdoor Finally

Finally I joined a group where I can spend the weekends painting outdoors. I have been painting based on photographs and the shift to plein air is a big change. I spent yesterday session mainly in sketching. At the end of the session we were lucky to have a 90 year old man agreeing to pose as a model for portrait. Here is the portrait I made with pencil originally - added a dash of color later on to give it the real personality of the old man!!

Human Figure at the center (water colour)

Recently I have started working on figure drawing with the help of a great book by Andrew Loomis. I also then started looking at compositions where human figure is at the center. Here are few paintings based on some picasa photographs having human figures as center of attraction! I hope you will like these. The last one is my favourite!!

Watercolor sketches

Photographs as everyone knows enhance the contrast significantly making areas in shadow, very dark. So when one tries to paint from photograph on a large size paper, the painting does not have the same impact as the photograph. So I wanted to try something on a small size paper and ended up selecting a pocket size sketchbook. Here are 2/3 sketches I made yesterday and day before. I loved the effect, I hope you would like them as well.

practice (watercolour)

Since last few days I am practising some brushwork. Here is a sample.

children at play (pencil drawing)

For last few weeks I am practising rapid sketching where I try to draw sketches in 60/90/120 seconds. This hopefully will help me sketch people on the move, especially children who hardly sit still. These two sketches have benefitted from this practice.

Back to old habits

I used to make portraits from celebrity photographs. With lot of patience and some skill, I was able to copy number of photographs in pencil drawing. But I never seriously practised any drawing techniques. I did not take any training either. So for many years this was the only thing I could do in the art world. Each portrait used to take around 6 to 8 hours (some up to 20 hours) and I had to use as much eraser as pencils. I used to work sq. inch to sq. inch and complete the picture. Since I have now been practising for last 3 months, I thought let me see whether I can do the copy stuff any faster. And this picture was born in around 25 minutes. Though it is not a perfect copy, I feel I was able to catch the essence of the photograph (the meditative concentration) quite ok. What do you think?

Portrait by accident (Pencil drawing)

Originally I was just planning a quick sketch. After drawing the contours of the face and hand I realized that the sketch was too big for the small (and cheap) pad I was using. So I decided to draw the face also. I was not expecting much from this (and especially given half my attention was on TV). But to my own surprise, not only the features but also the expression on face turned out to be quite accurate. This is what I call luck! I hope with more and more practice, the odds improve further.

Reading Face (Pencil Drawing)

Face of a woman reading seriously!

Another sketch (Pencil Drawing)

And this one is little better I think!

Few quick sketches (Pencil Drawings)

There were breaks in my 1 drawing a day routine in last 2 weeks. The only "achievement" was these quick sketches. Few attempts at portraits were not successful. Need to work a lot on that!

One more from Mahabaleshwar (Pencil Drawing)

Here's one more sketch from my Mahabaleshwar trip. My room partner watching TV.

Experiment continues (pencil drawing)

I liked my previous experiment of sketching my own hand. So here is one more.

Finally a face on the sketch (pencil drawing)

After numerous sketches without face, yesterday I dared to draw one with the face. Is it good? I don't think so (may be I will give it 5 out of 10). But it gives me satisfaction to have moved forward. For me progress is important. I am not (yet?) an artist, so you will not find great drawings or paintings here. What I am documenting is the learning process. To see after one year whether the line strokes have become more confident, proportions have improved, perspective is correct, light and shadows are depicted properly and so on. We always see the end result of learning but what about the process? How did the present artists practise their craft? I do not know. This is why I feel documenting the learning is important. Each person has his/her own style of drawing/painting. Some day I will develop something of my own also. It will be interesting then to see whether one can figure out how my style got developed based on these posts. End of the day, the style will be determined by my likes, dislikes, strengths and weaknesses. This journey will tell me whether the way I learnt had an impact.

My Left Hand (pencil drawing)

One more experiment to get the lines right rather than the shading part.

No tension, just relax! (pencil drawing)

Reading in the comfort of cushions (pencil drawing)