Showing posts with label portraits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label portraits. Show all posts

Monday, February 22, 2016

Puppies and colored pencils



A little experiment with fore-shortening and using colored pencils, two things I often avoid in my lazy drawings. (I got a little bored with the true life coloring of this dog, added a bit too much purple. Didn't really show up this much until I hit it with fixative. Whoops.) This is from a photo of a lost dog I saw on Facebook. Lately my Facebook feed seems to be heavily populated with lost and stray dogs. I though I'd turn that guilt I feel from not saving all those dogs into a project. So now I'm drawing dogs.

Would you like a drawing or painting of your sweet dog? Message me for info on commissions.

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Draw Tyler


Copyright Michelle Taff
From my sketchbook - detail. Copyright Michelle Taff

For the last two weeks I've been really interested in drawing faces. It's a skill that doesn't come easily to me, and I've been saying I would practice more portraiture for a long time. Below are a few examples.

From my sketchbook - detail. Copyright Michelle Taff

From my sketchbook. Copyright Michelle Taff

From my sketchbook. Copyright Michelle Taff

From my sketchbook - detail. Copyright Michelle Taff.

The first two pages I drew from photos uploaded to the sketchy app. The second two, well they're everywhere. Enough said (unless you can't tell who they are...???).  I really like the idea of drawing political figures and also wish I had the skill to draw caricatures. Something else to work on. I will say, my faces generally look like human faces, but rarely do they look like the photo or the person I'm drawing. Plenty of work still to do.

But this week I got really into the idea of sketching my town, and started with a trip downtown, stopping at the Children's Park on the way. This is a really fun project but way more work than I anticipated. If I want to be accurate anyway. Hopefully I don't get sick of it. To keep from getting completely bogged down in the minutiae of drawing places I started a series of small works. This is something I can complete in a relatively quick time and will give me something to sell down the way.

From my sketchbook. Copyright Michelle Taff

From my sketchbook. Copyright Michelle Taff.

Small works.  Copyright Michelle Taff

Also I started back to work on a couple of paintings I started last month and then abandoned. They are NOT completed in a relatively quick time. They are mind-numbingly slow process works. But I can't seem to help but pick difficult subjects to paint. I guess I like the challenge. Here is a work-in-progress shot of Chinese cabbage. Pretty thrilling I know. But... the heart wants what the heart wants... 


Painting in progress. Copyright Michelle Taff