Blog 2.2

I had planned this week to start learning how to draw insects from one of the books I have. However, this Saturday I sat down and just started drawing tree- I am not sure what inspired me to do so, but I ended up coming out with a pretty nice picture:

It took probably about 3 to 4 hours to make, but I enjoyed doing it so it did not seem like to long. I started out making two trees, one of them a bit further away than the other. I was going to color it with colored pencils but I did not have enough black, so instead I used oil pastels. It turned out to be much better than pencils since it made the trees look very dark. For the bottom part, I took a chunk of the oil pastel and dragged it across the paper a few times. I did not push very hard, hence the speckled black and white texture.

 I was originally going to make the background (the sky behind the trees) with sunset or twilight colors. So either a mixture of blue and green; or a mixture of orange and red. However, as I neared the end, I decided that the background would look much better if I made it with the same colors as the rest of the picture. I smudged the oil across my fingers then smeared it across the page, this way it almost looked like fog.

For my second picture I decided to keep on the subject of plants. I looked up ‘flowers’ on google search. I came across a beautiful flower called a lotus. Here is the picture I that I was trying to make it look like:

I started out drawing the shape of the petal furthest away then I filled in all the other petals from there. I then colored the rest in with colored pencil. Here is the end product:

Overall,  I think that it turned out good. The leaves in the back found look slightly wonky or unrealistic, but my flower look nice. My only complaint is that my camera seemed to wash out a lot of the color.

If I have time at the end of my product I will come back to drawing plants because I enjoyed this very much. I will also try to incorporate oil pastels into my future drawings.

Blog 2.1

I started off this week learning to draw a lions - more specifically a male lion and a female lion. To show if I could progress, I started out by trying to draw the lions with no instruction from the book or the internet. I simply picked several images offline, and tried to copy them. As expected, I did not even know where to start drawing it. You can see below, they did not turn out great, but I wasn't expecting anything different. Also, I worked on for them each for about 15- 20 min. before giving up, and moving on to the actual project.

For the male lion I completely looked out of the book. I first drew circles for the bottom and the chest, then circles for where the knees are. Originally, I drew two circles for the head. After I drew the basic shape of everything, I realized that the lions head was wonky looking, so I went online and looked up some pictures on the internet. I managed to make his head look much better, but it took some time. When it came to shading, I drew his mane with large stokes so it looked like
long hair. For the body I shaded in the area, adding more pressure to where the dark or muscly parts were. I rubbed/ smeared the lead so it looked more fluent and natural instead of seeing the scratch marks of the pencil. I was surprised how much more realistic and better the drawing looked after I had applied shading to it.

     I also mainly looked out of the book when learning how to draw the female lion. I learned that the main point of using circles as starting points is to get the proportions right. At first I drew the body then looked up online how to draw the head (the book did not describe how to do this well enough) only to realize that the head was too far apart from the rest of the body! Not wanting to redraw the head, I erased the body and redrew it with the right proportions. Again, I shaded in the lion and smeared the lead with my finger. I was very happy when I finished this lion because I think it looked much better than the previous one.

Lastly, I decided to draw a deer. This time I had understood the overall idea of how to draw an animal- mostly by putting circles proportional to each other then connecting them with lines. So instead of learning from the book, I tried to copy a picture that I found off of google images. I picked the first deer that was on the page. Overall, I had no problems drawing the body. However, the face was pretty tricky. The head was slightly turned so at first I thought I should draw a lopsided circle to make the face look larger on one side. This was ultimately a mistake, and I found that I had to simply draw a regular circle then position the eyes in the appropriate places to make it seem like the face was bigger on one side. I then completely erased the lines on the  side of the face the faces the body, and I shaded the part where the neck reaches the face. This way there is no definite place where the face ended. I think I did pretty good on drawing this deer. My big mistake though, now that I look at the picture, is that the body seems a bit too long.

For this next week I will either continue learning how to draw animals, learn how to draw insects, or learn how to draw plants- I have not decided yet.


     

Blog 2.0

  I have to admit, I am quite excited about my new genius project. I'm not sure where I got the idea to start drawing, but now that I have set my mind to it, I can't wait to get started. I decided that I was going to learn how to draw several things. I definitely want to learn how to draw people- more specifically their face and body, which I plan to do in two different steps. First the face, then the figure. I suppose this is the most important to me, and what I want to succeed at the most; probably because it is the most challenging. I will draw animals, and insects, and I may also do scenery and plants, if I have mastered a type of drawing and want to move on to a new subject.

         I checked out several books from the library: one on how to draw insects, one on how to draw animals, one on the human face, one on the human figure and one on drawing with colored pencils. I plan on using these as my resources, along with the help of the internet. Below I put pictures of the books. As I start using them I will post more pictures of their content.

            

 I got the books on drawing insects and animals from the children's section. They have a bit more instruction on how to draw certain things. Whereas the other books are a more vague in their directions. The final results are also less detailed, so I will start with these two books, since they seem easier.






These next books have some really cool drawings in them, and the authors seem to be experts when it comes to teaching art . I will probably not be able to draw pictures as skilled as these, but they will serve as a good guide never less.

          Lastly, I bought a book on how to draw with colored pencils. I think that art becomes more realistic and detailed with color or shade is put into it. Hopefully this book will teach me to do just that. I'll try to integrate techniques mentioned in this book into my drawings.

            I actually started looking through this book and I tried to color what the book called "texture".  It is like making small patterns that look like texture from far away. You may be able to tell which one I drew.

         Well, that's all I have to say for now. Good bye until next week!