Bamboo

Having photographed flowers in the garden recently I thought it was a good opportunity to share another garden plant, our ...Bamboo jungle.....

inspired recently by a post which  Danny Gregory did for the EDM challenge 'draw your foot'  when he used a bamboo pen,  I thought  haha!  I'll try making a piece of bamboo from the garden into a pen!.....but would it work....



here's the first effort

not bad....I used it like a dip pen with ink.   Then decided to refine the nib, so I trimmed it down more to a point

and tried various outlines....

I like the effect the pen gives with varying thick and thin lines - and the randomness of them...

and a quick drawing...

"So why does mum expect me to model for her!"

All in all I'm really pleased with this and intend to use more pieces trimmed to various widths -

yay lots of free pens!

- Thank you Danny for this inspiration -

Fuchsia in the garden

The sun has helped to bring out some beautiful flowers in our garden, one of which is a fuchsia.  The other day I took the opportunity, whilst the sun shine is here, to get some photos of it

of course, this meant the inevitable sketches too.  I decided to try out various techniques for this exercise,

 starting with pencil....

this next one didn't have pencil at all, just a brush full of paint - when the first application of paint had dried
I then went in with a stronger mix for extra tonal value...

followed by the wild one of the bunch - an ink outline first, then the paint - when that had dried completely I went over with my Lamy Safari pen washing out the ink with clear water, just to see where it went...

a simple ink sketch for this one.....

and finally

Ink and then the watercolour added - carefully though, as I didn't want the ink to run...you'll notice in a lot of places the paint leaves a gap - this gave it the effect of light hitting the flower, I quite liked the result....

Have a great weekend everyone

 I have linked to Paint Party Friday



 

Wordless Wednesday

Sketching and drawing William

Over the past year or so I have drawn, painted and sketched William, and although I have added these at various times to this blog and to the williamthelurcher blog, I have increasingly felt there was a need for a seperate space for them..... so I finally decided to take the plunge and create a seperate blog just for William sketches and drawings and share his adventures with you.

I shall post them good or bad,  they will all get a look in.   Art is fun and I intend for this to be a bit of fun too, plus it will be interesting to see how it all progresses.

And don't worry, I'm still continuing with this blog and William's.  The new blog is like an Add-On and is purely for sketches and drawings with perhaps the occasional painting thrown in. 

Here's the name and link:

www.sketchingwilliam.blogspot.com

I hope you will enjoy visiting it sometimes