Sketching Tips: Part IV

Dear Bloggies (It's been a while since I called you that! Isn't annoying?!),

Today I want to share some sketches that I have made in the last couple of days. They were all made on Sunday during church. Shhh! Don't tell! Just kidding, I think everyone in my church of 40 people knows that I am drawing the whole time. 

Enjoy!

Love,

LR 

1. This is a strange series of tiny sketches all arranged together like thumbnails on the computer. I used two colours and a black pen to draw tiny snippets of the objects in the room where our church congregates. For instance I drew the top of the microphone stand, the pages of someone's Bible and a portion of a chair. This was fun and it caused me to look at the room I was in more closely. Usually I would say that there is nothing really interesting to draw in such a space. But with this exercise I was forced to find points of potential visual interest. 

2. Here I was practicing a graphic novel-y look and drawing some scenes from the room. I feel like the purple of the basket is such and artificial colour that it contributes to the comic book nature. I was also going very 2D here. 

3. Here I did a very quick figure sketch of my pastor and his mother. I used a #4 pencil (very soft!). I did a little finger-smudging on the chair, which I slightly regret. My art teacher in elementary school encouraged us to use this technique, but in art school it was frowned upon. I tend to frown upon it these days, because in my eyes it can create an artificial softness which did not come from the pencil itself. The drawing also got smeared because the pencil was so soft. 

I was happy with the mother in this sketch. I sometimes feel like if you don't grasp a figure's position in the first few strokes it is very hard to go back and capture it correctly.