California Sketches

This week I returned home from a 4 1/2 week vacation in California. I hadn't been away for such a long time in more than 10 years! It was also my first time in the US. We had a great time, I've seen so many wonderful things, visited amazing places and met the greatest people.

Normally I do quite a bit of sketching when I'm on vacation but this time there was so mcuh to do that I hardly had the time to sit down and draw.

And some sketches from the awesome San Diego Zoo:

The Shepherd

Today I sketched a dog.

Ink on paper.

Extrapolation

Some examples of this week's assignment from the Schoolism gesture course I'm doing. This week's lesson was Extrapolation, explained by Alex Woo as: "The process of seeing beyond the surface of what's in front of you."

In my previous post you saw some studies of foxes that were part of the previous homework assignment. This lesson I had to use my chosen animal, the fox, and focus on drawing the model as if he or she was a fox. The big challenge is to keep the original gesture in the drawing without loosing the spirit of a fox, you do not want your drawing to feel like a guy dressed up as a fox.

These are just some of the examples of what I did for this assignment. As you can see I have been using film stills as an inspiration.

Ink on paper.

Red Fox Studies

Recent homework from the Gesture course on Schoolism. Apart from our usual model drawing assignments, this time we also had to research an animal of choice. We are to study the anatomy of one animal so that we are able to draw it without using reference.

As you might have guessed, I chose a Red Fox for this assignment. This is only a selection of the many sketches I did, both on loose sheets and in my sketchbook. One of the many great things about this course it how much it makes me sketch. I have started a new sketchbook early october -one of those thick old-fashioned a4-sized hardbacks-  and it is already filled halfway through! Mostly with gesture sketches and café drawings done for the gesture course. 

All of these are 100% traditional: ink, (Pentell Pocket Brushpen, Pentell Sign, Pitt Brush Pen) and color pencil on paper.

 

Katow-jo

Watched Anchorman the other night, did this sketch of the bear at the end. (That Schoolism course is ruining me, I can't watch a film without pausing it to sketch interesting poses anymore!)

Brown Pitt brushpen on paper, digital tones with Photoshop.

At the Zoo

Yesterday I spend the afternoon at the Amsterdam zoo, Artis. It was a lot of fun, although it was really cold. (We're not having much of a spring so far.) 

If you have been to Artis you might be surprised by the sketch of the tiger. There are no tigers at Artis but in the Aquarium building they have a small museum with mounted animals. At the moment most of it is closed though, because starting next week they will have a new exhibition showcasing the legandary Artis hippo Tanja. She died back in 2009, aged 49. Tanja was extremely popular and starting April 25th she will return to Artis.

I'm looking foward to do some sketches of the hippo; the great thing about the mounted animals is that you can get real close to them. Also they tend to move less than their living counterparts. Which makes for easier drawing. 

If you're wondering why I didn't finish the stripes on the tiger if it was stuffed anyway, it was because I had to leave in order to be on time for a masterclass by storyboard artist Jim Cornish at the Imagine Film Festival. Really cool to see and hear him talk about storyboarding for feature films. (He worked on Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, most of the Harry Potter films and X Men: First Class.) Check out his site for some cool storyboards!    

All sketches are ink (Papermate Flair & Pitt Pen) and marker on grey sketchpaper.

Hylpen

This is a drawing I did as a gift for my parents. This month they celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary! It is a picture of the old city Hindeloopen, one of the eleven cities of the Dutch province Friesland.

This piece was done with brown bistre ink, I am having a lot of fun with this material. I used different washes of ink to create the difference in tone, mixing the ink with water to create lighter tones. To get those sheep I had to carefully tape of the areas where I wanted the sheep, using a scalpel to cut the tape in the desired shape (those sheep in my previous post were setches for this drawing), after inking the background with a brush I removed the tape to fill in the details of the sheep. I used brushes for the main shapes and background tones, and then used dip pens to fill in the details.

This piece is prety big (44 x 19 cm) and the ink has caused the paper to curl a little. Because of this it was hard for me to make good scan. I'll post another pic when I have it framed.

Beh.

Some sketches of sheep. The image above is a really small doodle with brown bistre ink (brush and dip pen). The image below is done with pencil and the last image was done with a Tombo.

I'd never really drawn sheep before, it always is a lot fun to draw something new. You think you know what a sheep looks like but when I started to look at pictures and did some initial sketching I discovered that, as always, you never really see something until you draw it.

These are sketches for a bigger illustration that I will show you here soon.   

Animal Sketching

This morning I went to the Amsterdam zoo, Artis. Earlier this year I became a member of Artis, giving me free admission for a year. Since the zoo is at walking distance, it seemed like a smart investment. 

So now I can drop in whenever I feel like it. The last months I have used the oppertunity a lot. (Artis is awesome at the moment! They had a real babyboom this summer: there's a lion cub, a baby elephant, a baby giraffe and two baby gorillas, just to name a few.) Of course I always bring my drawing kit, but for some reason I wasn't happy with my last sketches. Drawing animals is always a challenge and I often suspect them of conspiring against me. (When I approach them they are in a great pose, sitting perfectly still. But the moment I put pen to paper they begin to move, usually opting for the hey-how-do-ya-like-my-behind-position.) 

But today I can't complain. I was in the zoo for almost four hours, the animals were great and I got to do some nice sketching. I sure hope you like 'em too! (All sketches were done with a Papermate Flair, and/or Tombo Brushpen. Colors added with Photoshop)