Pencil drawings

Squirrel practice in pencil and watercolour

Painting of a squirrel's head in watercolour.
| Donna

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
| Donna

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

Sketching Sally the fidget monster!

| Donna

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
| Donna

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.