[Jaylene]

I thought I had enough experience so I jumped right into the courses willy nilly.  Now its back to the Beginning Drawing course for me.

[Jaylene]

There is a youtube channel called Peter Draws.  He is a pen and ink artist and has lots of pen reviews videos.  He is also very entertaining.  You might find something useful there that will be exactly what you want.  I have ruined a lot of fountain pens so I don’t feel right about giving advise.  Rotring was the brand I used in school if that helps.

[Jaylene]

Everyone really appreciates your husbands hard work right now!  Hopefully we will all get through these difficult times soon.  I look forward to getting more art done.  I enjoyed this exchange very much and look forward to seeing you and your work around the forum.

[Jaylene]

Hi,

I had the same question.  I found the attached documents in a google search.  

[Jaylene]

My favorite sketchbook is hard back, spiral bound, 11×14 inches style, the brand is Art Alternatives.  The paper has a tiny bit of tooth so its perfect for graphite which I like best, but is ok for pastel, pen and ink, even markers if I am careful.  The paper is way too thin for any kind water media though.  Its cheep enough for circles and lines and gesture drawing exercises and nice enough for more finished graphite work and sturdy enough to take anywhere.  I also love strathmore’s mixed media sketchbooks.  I have one for oil swatches and color experiments.  I coated the pages with acrylic medium first.   Strathmore’s toned sketchbooks are great too.  Your husband’s sketchbook sounds amazing.  How cool!  I hope you post some of your work.

Charcoal is so messy that I usually use Canson paper sheets attached to boards on an easel.  I literally hated it at first but I started a program called Language of Drawing put out by a trompe l’oeil painter, Anthony Waichulis and it started to grow on me.  I did hundreds of charcoal and white pastel gradations.  Apparently charcoal/pastel is most like painting but without the bother of paint and brushes.  That’s what I have been told, but I’m too much of a beginner to say for myself.  Then I came across an internet drawing course on Bargue Plates.  The New Masters Academy now has a course on Bargue Plates.  This is from a French 19 century drawing course by Charles Bargue.  Its a series of prints made from etchings of various classical casts that are meant to be copied in charcoal using the sight-size method.  Its in the public domain so if you google Bargue Plates you will see what I mean.  Lots of people say its not real art and I understand where they are coming from, but its so satisfying to me to make an reasonably accurate copy.   So to each his/her own.  I really want to get good at drawing portraits and work through Steve Huston’s head construction course.  As you can see I am rather chaotic about how I practice, which maybe why I got so attached to the type of sketchbook I use.  Its the only constant.  The only thing I have to show for all my effort really.  sigh.

I have been so unmotivated and undisciplined these last few weeks with all that is going on.  You have really motivated me to get back on the horse so to speak.  I hope you and your family are doing well.  Take care of yourself and let art be therapy for right now.  Goals will always be there.  I try to not worry about them.  Take good care of yourself.

[Jaylene]

Its a great accountability goal because its so easy to measure.  I wish the brand/style of sketchbook I like had 100 pages.  Its just so much more impressive than 80.  On the other hand I like looking at them all accumulating on a shelf, all neat and organized like I know what I am doing.  I tend to oil paint on the weekends due to the need for a larger dedicated block of time.  I have my sketchbook and a larger long term charcoal drawings for during the week.  I try to keep track of my time spent on art in my planner, (actually making marks) with the goal of 20 hours per week.  To be honest I very seldom meet this goal, but its very satisfying when I do.  Uninterrupted time is so important and so hard to get, and everything takes so much longer than one would think.  With that in mind I usually use my sketchbook however the spirit moves me.  Sometimes I am following along with a NMA class, sometimes I am using the timed figure drawing sessions, sometimes its random stuff off of Pinterest.  As for artist endurance, that’s a real thing!  I wish mine were better.  My city used to offer life sessions during the summers on weekends.  4 hours with a 5 min break every 20 min and it left me completely  exhausted afterwards.  Sadly the life sessions were discontinued so the city could have more children’s art programs.  I hope to be good enough someday I can work full time as an artist after I retire from my day job. If that doesn’t work out at least know I spent my time well.  I would not worry how you spend your art time as long as you are making marks on something.  I don’t think watching youtube counts if you know what I mean.  Just spend a lot of time.  I look forward to hearing your ideas and how you manage.  Good luck to you.

[Jaylene]

You seem to be very organized about how you practice drawing all ready.  I can’t think of anything you are leaving out.  I don’t know if this will help with creating a drawing plan, but what helps me is keeping to the same style sketchbook and having the goal of finishing one sketchbook every three months.  The one I have been using is an 11×14 80 page sketchbook and I try to use both back and front of the sheets unless I want a very nice finished drawing.  This may not seem like a lot of work but its in addition to oil painting and my full time non-art work.  I have about 7 finished sketchbooks now.  A hundred page sketchbook was always a significant part of the grade each semester I took drawing.  The instructor didn’t grade on the quality of the drawings just on the number of pages so we could work on anything we wanted.  I find that I automatically cover a lot of different subjects styles and drawing exercises automatically just to fill up the pages.

Your question is a good one and I look forward to the different responses.

 

 

 

[Jaylene]

Yes I am still following Steve’s course.  I am not sure exactly how to start a thread on Head Construction but I think its worthwhile to make it distint from more finished portraits.  You are right about staying with the basic shapes to get them right first.  It seems to me that portraits are a very good “canary in a coal mind” drawing subject.  I may not know  where or at one point in the drawing it all went wrong but you can tell if a face is not quite right.  Anyway I tried the beginning course with Chris Legespi.   Looking at the different heads, I think I do ok with placing the eye level, but not the whistle notch thing.  Also my pencil marks don’t imply that things wrap around out of sight.  So I will definetly take a step back and start Huston’s head construction class over.  Thank you so much for responding even though you didn’t feel like you could give real feed back.  What you said was very helpful to me and I really appriciate it.

 

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