One of my very favorite things to draw after horses are dead trees in different stages of returning back to elements. This one still holds up pretty well, a final testament to how high and wide it managed to reach in its lifetime.
It’s a tough life for a horse when she needs to munch and scratch an itching knee but has only one set of teeth for everything.
The blacks are ink, all shades of gray are charcoal including grays over blacks. I hoped for a different result, but it’s just a small sketch, so not a big deal. I will get where I want with the next version.
That’s my sketch on the go from earlier this week finished. I wanted to see how much texture could be built on Canson drawing paper with pencils only, without any other tools. To my surprise, the paper let be create quite a few nice subtle patterns. I especially like those crossing lines on the horse.
A somewhat failed experiment with charcoal on top of soft pastels – I was aiming for a little different, more dramatic look. Apparently a workable fixative is not capable of holding even a thin amount of pastel in place, and it keeps mixing with charcoal. I wonder what would work better?
I started with lush lichen I saw here in Oregon during winter, but it ended looking like something that would be at home in the swamps of Florida. Sometimes non-committed sketching takes you to unexpected places.
What it looked like half-way through:
Did a sketch for a girl who loves horses (should probably be in all capitals and blinking) and dreams of riding her own horse one day. Until then, a very own drawing of her favorite 4-H equine will have to suffice. This is a Birthday gift to her from her big sister.
Zen Brush is a beautiful little app with only one step of undo and no way to save anything in its original format. No layers, the eraser is very primitive and does not help much, so best to leave it alone and pretend it’s not there at all. One black brush, two translucent gray brushes and an option to change the brush size. All brushes are round and look more and more like painting wet on wet as their sizes grow. That’s it. The app would be almost like a Zen board where your creating is gone forever unless you were quick enough to take a photo. Similarly, Zen Brush has an option to export the drawing as a PNG file.
Lovely thing for quick sketches.
My first semi-serious attempt to do a more than a rudimentary sketch in ArtFlow app. You know what’s the best part of working in it? It saves all changes automatically and seemingly in real time, at least I haven’t lost anything yet. And I think if I ever hit the limit on the number of layers in the file it will be my phone’s fault, not the app’s.
It started with a reference photo of majestic icicles which I managed to lose shortly after mapping some details in pencil. Not willing to dig through my huge and badly documented collections of shots taken over 15+ years, I decided to continue on my own and see where it ends. Somehow it ended in an abstract that has little to do with icicles or anything else of that kind, but it was fun to work through it without much commitment to the end result.
Miscalculated where the horse should go on the piece of paper, but otherwise happy with the sketch. The subject was a beautiful chestnut, most likely a resident of the horse boarding facility across the street from our home in Cupertino, CA.
A joint effort of Corel Painter Mobile and Art Flow (both Android apps), with Painter carrying out most of it because it is so good at faking oil paints. I don’t like how real oils smell and how messy the entire process is, so digital looks like a nice alternative.
Despite several amazing finds among drawing apps and all niceties they offer, I find myself again with a piece of paper and a graphite pencil. Must be a habit.
I am gradually making friends with Painter Mobile Pro. Most of it happens on the Galaxy 5 phone because the screen on my tablet responds to a stylus a little erratically. The phone allows to draw surprisingly precise thin lines, it does not mind blending, smudging, or multiple layers. Well, for the most time. Every now and then it needs a little time to show me the result. Very handy for sketching on the go but still does not exactly a replacement for real tools and paper.
