Stage 2 incorporating values, hair, and some of her coat patterns. Saving the challenge of the face for last. Liking the way this is shaping up. First time attempt at complete dog drawing.
This took a couple of 30 minute sessions, so another hour or so.
Started some sketching of the dogs. This is the ball-obsessed puppy. About a 30 minute effort, focused on proportions and various angles of the sitting pose. Bad lighting on the photo, but you get the idea.
This was done with my right hand, my dominant hand by far.
Did some work on the bull ring today, but only a couple of hours and not enough progress worth posting. So, changing gears for a sec and going with a recent sketch of still life. Did this about a week ago and toyed around with some colored pencils. This was before my most recent sketching class that covered the value scale. Probably would have helped with the depth of the bowl. This took about an hour over 2 sessions. Next up is a sketch of one of the dogs and her ball obsession.
No new painting updates today – been a busy week at work, so no play time in the studio. But in the spirit of blogging discipline I wanted to post.
To the untrained eye, this post could look like, well… vomit. But it’s actually the painful reality of painting variations of sand hues. Gotta love that ochre and gray mashup!
The base mix for the arch yellow/sand was ochre, white, a little raw umber, and a spec of cad yellow. The grey is a standard mash of equal parts ultramarine blue and burnt sienna. To move the range of yellow ochre around, I experimented with varying values of the gray mixture. Fun stuff!
My arm hurts! 30 arch columns drafted. Still a lot more to go, but the spacing and angles were the tricky part, so I’m glad that’s done.
The addition of the arches, including the overlay sketch, took 3 hours.
I lack the skill to just paint the arches in, especially since I want the large, close ones to have good detail. So I opted to sketch in a few for starters. The ones further away won’t have the same detail, but will carry the burden of contrasting values to showcase the sunlight. Well, that’s the plan at least.
Added sky, improved the sand of the bull ring, including texture. FInally, laid in the first layer of benches on the lower level. Also figured out the spacing on the arches. Next weekend this should start looking more appealing.
2 hours to sketch base outline and lay down initial base layer.
Quick tester draft done in a few hours. Wanted to get a feel for the challenges with the perspective and arches. Also had to get some clue about how to mix 40 variations of sand colors.
Rhonda, Spain
This is my current project. Despite my distaste of bullfighting, I’m still captivated by the beauty of the architecture. My drawing instructor said this is a very complex perspective – I should have listened to her. It’s gonna take awhile.
Art Bern 