122- Window study

121 Pencil Sketch

After today's earlier sheep sketches I decided to do a more detailed study from a photo I took last week.

Free e-books

I've recently come across some wonderful old books on drawing and painting and thought I would share the online links to them for anybody who may be interested. This first link has several free excellent e-books on drawing. Including the following, which I would whole heartedly recommend:

'Pen Drawing: An Illustrated Treatise' by Charles Maginnis

'The Art of Illustration' by Henry Blackburn

'The Elements of Drawing' by John Ruskin

This second link opens up a copy of Alfred East's 'The Art of Landscape Painting in Oil Colour'.

113-120 Animal Sketches

Sketching lambs feeding is harder than you think, they move around a lot. My ego tells me to trash these sketches because they're not very good but they do show where I am at and one of the aims of this blog is to show my progress as an artist, warts an all.

111-112 Animal Sketches

Some quick sketches out and about this morning. I don't think I've ever sketched animals 'live' before so it was a new experience, plenty of room for improvement. I did try using a fountain pen which was a bit temperamental and didn't really help the quality of the line. (Not that I'm making excuses).

107-110

103-106

I watched a video on You-Tube last night where Andreas Deja talked about his career and inspirations and I was inspired to get out my Ken Hultgren book on 'The Art of Animal Drawing'. (You can watch the video here). I was also keen to try out my new Wolff sketching pencils! These drawings were copied from Ken's book in an attempt to begin to get a better understanding of animal anatomy.

102- Pen Sketch Exercise

I can't believe it's been almost 2 weeks since I've posted any work! I'm shocked at just how easy it is to get out of the habit of drawing on a regular basis. I have been somewhat preoccupied with other things including applying for jobs! Any-who... I thought I'd kick off with a drawing I copied from one of the books I'm reading at the moment. It was drawn with a fountain pen and a 0.3 fine-liner, they're not ideal but they'll have to do until I get some ink and nibs.

Whilst I still have a goal of drawing and painting landscapes etc, I am currently working on improving my technique and observation skills. I picked up a couple of old but very interesting publications on sketching and these have somewhat rekindled an interest in pen drawings. (I will post a link to the publications later)

So my goal for the month of June is to practice doing more pen and ink work.