Stretching the Sketch

Just a very quick post this morning, as I’m on my way to try out etching those rainforest drawings, but here’s another way to use your sketches: turn them into paintings. Or something like one. Here’s where I took a couple of quick drawings, one of my friend Doris’ horse, and one of a Sable antelope at the OKC zoo. I enlarged and redrew them onto good solid archival Rives BFK print paper and added some pastel touches here and there. I always let the paper and lines show through. Gotta go, but here are the results. They are both around 20″ x 30″.

Plein Air Pen and Ink

I just did something I swore I would never ever do. I cut the drawings out of my sketch journal. I used a sharp blade but it hurt anyway and I could have sworn I heard that book weep. A sketch should stay in the book, period. Larry Barth, a bird sculptor whose wonderful sketchbooks I’ve been privileged to examine, once told me, “sketches are your tools”. And so they are. And so, in the end, that’s why I took them out of the book- so they would be useful.

Art Never Stands Still

A very good tutorial by Carl Buell on the creation of a Mammoth in Photoshop will have you ready to try it, too. Highly recommended reading!

And a new mural in blog banner form by Carl (Olduvai George) can be seen at Creek Running North, with a wonderful travelogue to guide you through the Northern California Pleistocene.  Also highly recommended!