ankewehner.de

Sometimes, it takes some additional input to understand advice.

One thing is the “draw lines with one long stroke, not by adding up lots of smaller lines” one. I never understood how that would be possible, until I came across advice on how to improve your handwriting saying you should use your shoulder and back muscles, not your wrist and fingers for writing. Doesn’t mean I can magically DO it, but at least I have some idea of what I might try to learn.

Another are the scribble pictures. I remember doing those in art class back at school. Here’s the idea:
You scribble random loops and lines on a piece of paper
Then you look at it, and turn it into an image of whatever you happen to see in it.

I thought the idea was drawing over the lines as they were on the paper, so mostly I ended up with blobby rubbish, like snakes without heads, three-story mushrooms, or faces like this one:

Then I came across a tutorial at deviantart, which is not safe for work due to nudity, and looking at the example… You could add stuff. You could turn a circle into a face, or a hand. Yeah, I see how that might actually be fun, rather than frustrating, and result in more interesting images.

Here's the original scribble; lines darkened digitally to make sure they show up; actually I use very light pencil lines. I also turned the sheet around a bit until I spotted something...

I saw a head and a wing, and went from that...

Added feet and tail and refined some details. Would look better if I traced it on a clean sheet in ink, but I'll leave it as the little warmup practise it is.

I guess that’s a good time to upload some of the more interesting results of those warmup-practises.

The following four are other sketches, from my figure drawing class, and people who want to avoid nudity should avoid those.

I got a biiig box of art supplies in the mail today, mostly paper and Fimo. While I’d been waiting for it, I had an idea for a cane, and here’s the result:

The blue was mixed of equal parts Fimo Classic blue and Fimo Soft white (later experiments make me think 4 parts white and one part blue is better for sky blue). Yellow is Fimo Soft sunflower, and the red-orange layer was orange and yellow scraps mixed with indian red.

I rolled out the sunflower and the mixed blue on the thickest setting – 1 – of my pasta machine, and put two layers of each together, for thicker layers. I rolled out the orange-red mix on setting 7, pretty thin, and wrapped the yellow with it – note that the ends are wrapped, too. Then I rolled it up in a spiral.

For the sun rays I rolled a long sausage of yellow, wrapped it in more of the red-orange rolled out at thicknees 7, shaped it slightly triangular in profile, and cut it into lengths corresponding to the height of the spiral. Then I rolled more of the mixed blue into sausages and filled out the gaps between the rays.

Last I rolled out the rest of the blue mix to wrap the outside. I didn’t have enough left for two layers at thickness 1, so it’s one at 1 and 1 at 2 or 3.

If I try that again, I might use a thicker layer of yellow, or otherwise thinner and in turn more rays.