Quick Sketch!

Oh man! Blog fail! I haven't posted in a really long time. Life pretty much has gotten crazy busy over the past months. 


Here's a quick little sketch I did a while ago. I like that I added a bit of colour and just became a bright little sketch of a simple everyday thing - orange peels. 

Lately I've had the unfortunate experience of sitting down to draw and having no idea what to draw. This past week I've discovered that this blog I have been following for a while posts an object of the week to draw. 
Check it out here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/urbansketches/discuss/72157628988212267/ 


I think I'll give it a shot. I like the idea of having a different object to focus for a week.


Cheers! Hope you all have a good week.

Spring Fever

 From as far back as I can remember my sister has been good at writing. Even when she was really young she could create engaging stories. So recently she has begun to post these stories online to take a stab at selling them and she gave me the honour of partnering with her to create a cover for the book. This is a pretty high honour because though the saying goes, "Don't judge a book by its cover", we all do judge books by how they look. 

I drew the picture and the title by hand and then scanned it into Photoshop, added colour, and changed the outlines. I am not an expert in Photoshop by far so it took quite a bit of frustration and late night hours to get it look satisfactory. 

Click here to view the book!

Check out the book and let me know what you think! 

Also, soon to be posted on Amazon.

Line Drawings

Ok! Time for another post. 


This post is all about line drawings. I love trying to portray something using just lines because it really challenges me to get the shape of the object right. I can't just hide my mistakes with shading.

This one I really enjoyed creating darker lines for the shadows. Drawing plants is one of my go to things to draw because the leaves always have interesting shapes and perspectives to try and capture. 

I drew this from a photo in a magazine and discovered how hard it is to capture the shapes and nuances of material with just line.

How Not to Draw

Ok, so second post of the week. It's crazy that you can actually get more than one post in per week if you put your mind to it. Today I wanted to post an example of one of my sketches gone bad. I learned from this experience and thought it a valuable lesson.

Don't do this.


I started drawing my boyfriend sitting opposite me while he was sketching other stuff. I started with the feet and then worked up one side of the body. Then once I got to the neck I returned to the feet and sketched the other side. Once I got to the neck again, I realized it was far too wide and he would end up looking like some intense body builder who only worked out his neck muscles. Thus, the scribbles where his face should be. 


I learned that I should probably start with the face and work down or, even better, sketch a general outline of the body proportions to get them right, and then add the details. I got frustrated with this drawing at the time and so I didn't attempt to do it again, so I don't have any proof that I actually did learn from this experience. You'll just have to take my work for it. 

Still Life Sketching

Ok, so I figure it's probably about time for another post. Already my posting track record isn't so great. Anyway, here are some photos of sketches I did today. I had a few random objects and set them up as a type of still life and sketched for an afternoon. Here are the objects I sketched and below are the actual sketches.

 Shell

 Bird

Bottle

First Post!

Ah, I have entered the world of blogging. So many of my friends and acquaintances were starting blogs and discussing each others' blogs and following each others' blogs, that I was beginning to feel left out. Luckily, I am no longer 5 and I don't have to resort to begging my mom to let me have one because all the other kids are doing it. I can just make one myself and that line never worked on my mom anyway. Sticking to it is another story and was usually my mom's excuse for not giving me what I wanted - "Ballet? You only like it for the costumes. A lot of hard work comes before you get to wear that you know". Similarly, "Blogging?? You just want to be famous. Not very many people become famous by blogging. You have to write stuff every day, you know".

It's like I could be her.

The title of the blog refers mostly to what I intend to post here - sketches, but it also indicates skill level at blogging. Rather sketchy. But anyways, I'll give it a shot and probably post mostly pictures so I have to write a whole lot less. 

I'll start off with a couple photos of some quick sketches I did a while ago. Cheers! And have a great day!

 View from my front porch of a building under construction

 Sketch of some flowers later turned into an ink drawing

 Sketch for a portrait for my friend's wedding. Man, is it ever hard to draw people how they actually look!

 Note the coffee stains. This sketchbook has been places.

 Not drawn from a live model.

 Objects are less clear the farther away they are. This maybe an exaggerated example.