Sunday Sketching

After the huge success that Watercolour Wednesday turned out to be, I've decided that Sundays are for sketching. Inside, outside, any medium, just some relaxed weekend sketching. To this end, I went on a little excursion to the V&A where I hadn't been in some time.

My first attempt and the original from the Han dynasty

While there, I drew this horse head from China. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, I think I captured the expression quite well and the shading is alright too.

This one could've done with some more attention, I stopped too early. The right arm, chest and head are not very believable.

I've always shied away from drawing faces or hands in my life drawing because so far, they've never turned out great and I've been afraid of spoiling an otherwise successful drawing with a weird face or a misshapen hand. My teacher in the life drawing class at the Royal Drawing School last term had a rule that whatever we drew, we had to draw the feet. He said that students avoiding feet early on can turn into a neurosis that gets hard to fix later. I feel like it's time for me to take the jump and start drawing body parts I currently avoid. I figure the only way I'll get to a point where I won't mind drawing them anymore is to persevere though sucking at it for a while.

Finally, I decided to sketch the museum from outside. I started drawing the building but the spot I chose made me inhale all the exhaust fumes of exhibition road. On top of that, my sketching stamina isn't at a level yet where I can comfortably paint a building this complex in one sitting, especially outside so I took some pictures and continued back home.

I tried to keep thing loose and fix a mix between detail and suggestion. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out although I want to try to match that clear blue of the sky. One other thing I've been experimenting with is a technique I picked up from Marc Taro Holmes which he calls "charging in" with colour that is breaking up the uniformity of a wash with additional colours dropped onto the wet paper.

All in all a successful day. Next week I'll have my first portrait drawing class at the Royal Drawing School, I'm very excited about that. Until then!