Young Elsa

material: pencil and white gel pen on paper, A4
time: sketch: 10 minutes, coloring about 10 hours

This is Elsa as a young teenager looking in a mirror and trying to get to know herself. She has to stay hidden in her room and control her emotions at all times. I wanted to portrait her innocence as well as the insecurity.
I wanted to keep the focus on the face, which is why I kept the background and dress that simple. 

background: 
My son is a big fan of Elsa, he begged me to draw her for him. So I quickly sketched her in my book. Somehow I liked the sketch even though the proportions are not perfect, so I decided to color it. If I knew back then how much effort I would put into the colors, I would have been more careful with the lineart, especially the lips and eyes. 

Landscape Practice with Pastel Chalks

material: pastel chalk on paper, A3

time: about 2 hours

digital editing: some

Today I learned...

- how not to use pastel chalks  

- that I  don´t like pastel chalks 

I was really unhappy about the outcome, because of several reaons:

- pastel chalk is very imprecise and does a lot of mess

- my pastel chalks didn´t mix very well, so no matter how hard I tried, I didn´t get the colours I wanted

- I am very unexperienced at landscapes, so I had a lot of trouble with "anatomy" and dark areas

In the end, the picture turned out ok after the digital editing. And also, the point of practicing is not to set any high expectations. 

I have also uploaded the original piece without any editing and one version with edited colors, which I found kind of cool and distracts from the bad original :-D

 

Inkblotch Kitty

material: watercolour and fineliner on paper, A4
time: about 1 hour

If you want the story behind it: yesterday my sons and I had fun with their watercolours and splashed them on our papers while listening to "Peter and the Wolf" from Sergei Prokofiev. And somehow I ended up seeing a cat in the inkblot, so I decided to outline it 

Collaboration: Sea Robin Mermaid

materials: watercolour, colored pencils, gouache and fineliners on paper, A3

time: about 5 hours

For my first collaboration I was allowed to colour some lineart from Björn Ludwig (lost-craft.deviantart.com/), so all credits for the lineart go to him!

I had a lot of fun with this! It is so refreshing, when you don´t have to worry about proportions and perfect lineart, because someone has already taken care of it. :-)Thank you very much, Björn! 

Here is his original artwork:

Summary of Art 2016

I am quite happy about the progress I have made and am looking forward to further improvement in 2017!

Practice: Tree

material: pencil on paper, A5,
time: about 2 hours

During the first 45 minutes I sketched the tree while sitting on a bench outside. When I had the propotions and basic shadows done, I returned home and finished the rest of the drawing, which took me a little more than an hour. This is the first time I really made use of all the different graphite pencils I had and also the first time I completed drawing using life-reference (or whatever you call it).

In this drawing, I tried to apply my new knowledge about the composition of an artwork. Using the motive and the displayed window, I tried to balance the diagonal (lower left to upper right) with the counter diagonals and the horizontal and vertical lines. I also tried approximating the golden mean (stem of the tree and lowest horizontal branch).


The whole composition theories are new to me and I can´t wait to lean more!

Draw This Again: Self Portrait

pencil on paper, A5

In 2014 I used a mirror and this year I drew from memory. Both pieces took me about 30 minutes.
I must say, I really do see the improvement. Aside from the huge eyes, I was rather happy with the outcome.
I am very much looking forward to trying a self-portrait from a picture or with the help of a mirror