Eagle Owl Drawing

This is my drawing for the January Scrawlrbox challenge “nature’s eye”. You can see the materials I got and my review of them here.

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Scrawlrbox #16 Review

January’s box is my third and completes my 3 month subscription. I loved every box so I’ll definitely get more in future. This month the featured artist is Gemma Stylz and the challenge theme was “Nature’s Eye”. The art print is beautiful up on the shelf above my desk.

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The Friday Squirrel

Sketch of a squirrel reading while sitting on an old log
Sketch of a squirrel reading while sitting on an old log
Squirrel has been busy collecting for winter and stops on a nearby log to read during a break.

A little squirrel doodle to start the weekend.

 

Squirrel practice in pencil and watercolour

Painting of a squirrel's head in watercolour.

A page from my watercolour sketchbook featuring assorted red and grey squirrels. Below that are some of the pencil sketches I did first. These pages have led to a running joke about my “squirrels per day” count.

Paintings of squirrels in watercolour paint.
Red and grey squirrels in watercolour on A5 paper.
Pencil sketches of squirrels
Some practice pencil sketches that later turned into watercolour practice.

Squirrels

Sketch of a squirrel eating, pencil on A5 paper

Two more drawings from my sketch book. The first was a close up of a squirrel eating. Around here the squirrels seem to divide their time between eating food, burying food, performing acrobatics to acquire food and playing daredevil with other squirrels and cats. Probably trying to guard their food!  I wish these were red squirrels but I find it hard to dislike grey squirrels in London, they are such entertaining little creatures. Especially when they perform acrobatics above our garden at full speed.

A squirrel eating, pencil sketch on A5 paper
A squirrel eating, pencil sketch on A5 paper

Rabbits!

Spotted Baby rabbit, A5 pencil & graphite stick

Some of these rabbit pictures have already been posted in my gallery, but I wanted to gather them all together as a set and post about them. Continue reading

Sketching Sally the fidget monster!

After a bit of cartoon practice, I decided to get some speed sketching practice with little Sally as my model.

I’m sure whenever she notices I’m looking at her, she gets the fidgets! It took a few aborted poses before I got the second sketch.  Even then, she still moved her head and paws mid way through.

Quick sketches of Sally
Quick sketches of Sally

Horse sketches

Running - speed sketch using pencil on A5 paper

I haven’t skipped a single day of my sketch book challenge since I started.

happy dance

A few more scans for you 🙂

Horse sketch
Horse sketch – timed 10 mins outline, 10 mins basic shading then about 20 mins tarting up the shading because I was having fun 😀

Both quality and quantity are increasing already, and making myself draw EVERY day whether I feel like it or not, I’m having to find a way of working in any mood or situation.  Which was another of my goals.  I learned that being in a really grouchy mood makes for very tense, ugly work when I’m horribly critical of myself.  But after a few hours of ugly cartoon faces and a dreadful horsey, I just got to that “oh, what the hell” point and like magic a sketch flew onto the paper one bold line after another.  I look at that page with the horrible horse and the free one beside it and they don’t even look like the same person drew them.  But that day was a valuable lesson for me.  Here’s the scan so you see what I mean.

2 Horse Sketches
Left was drawn while I was all tense and grouchy, right was drawn immediately after when I relaxed and just let it happen.

I’m doing cartoon practice and also more realistic work.  I’ve always been a bit too meticulous and I love relaxing while I do very careful texturing in pencil.  You get into a rhythm and that becomes like a meditation for me.  So I have used my sketchbooks to draw quickly and choose random poses (currently horses) to challenge myself on the accuracy side too.

Sketch book Challenge: Day 5 – Doodle Diary Time!

Felt like utter bleh today (nothing serious, don’t panic!) but it seemed a good day to just do a doodle diary and have some fun on the page.

Doodle Diary