I recently had the great pleasure of attending Sean Cheetham‘s 5-day portrait painting workshop on the Spanish island of Menorca. Continue reading
Painting again, and Studio Clearance
Wow, almost a year since my last post here, and the end of the 100 heads challenge, during which I was solely working on my drawing skills. Almost immediately after that, I started painting again, and it’s been nice getting to grips with colour again. Continue reading
100 Heads Later
People, and specifically faces, have always been one of my favourite things to draw, ever since I first attempted to reproduce Beatles album covers in oil pastels in my high school art classes. I became fascinated by caricature in my teenage years and throughout my twenties, then gravitated back toward realistic portraits, but the challenge of capturing someone’s likeness in a convincing way has always drawn me in. Continue reading
Some recent sketches
Here’s a few recent sketches from my toned paper sketchbook.
How to Get Good at Drawing
tl;dr – Stop writing blog posts and start drawing… a lot.
The art of the Selfie
Anyone who draws or paints portraits has most likely done their fair share of self portraits. While it may seem to some like an exercise in narcissism, it is in fact mainly a matter of convenience. It’s not easy to find people willing to sit still for several hours while you draw them, so it makes sense to draw the one person who is guaranteed to be sitting still for as long as it takes!
It also makes for a decent profile picture!
I drew a new self portrait recently, and I thought I’d share a few others that I’ve done over the years, in a variety of different styles and media:
2005
2007
2010
2011
2016
It’s always interesting to see with each new self portrait, how I’ve developed in my drawing/painting ability, as well as how I’ve aged! Look at those long flowing locks I used to have 😦
I think it might be fun to do a new selfie every year around my birthday. Maybe I’ll try an oil portrait next time.
Getting to Grips with Charcoal
I always found charcoal a bit cumbersome and messy to work with. I used it for quick figure sketches sometimes, but never really felt like I could get very detailed with it.
But after doing a few graphite drawings, I felt I was missing some of the expressive quality you get from painting, so I decided to give charcoal another go. Continue reading
