kencrocker

Gouache in Chicago

I'm finally back in Chicago on Fridays: 1, 5, 10, and 15 minute sketches in charcoal, and 30 minutes in pencil and gouache. This painting was done in my 5 x 8 inch Moleskine sketchbook, so the lighting is different above and below the fold. I'm looking for larger paper that takes the paint (or… Continue reading Gouache in Chicago

New Drawing Set-up

I had to upgrade my computer system to be sure I was compatible with others I work with when I design books and newsletters. A side benefit of upgrading is I can rotate the 24-inch Dell monitor so I can draw from reasonably large photos on the Web. In the photo I have a French… Continue reading New Drawing Set-up

Class at Madison College

I usually take some kind of workshop every summer, and this year I signed up for Chris Gargan's Life Drawing for Illustration class at MATC here in Madison. It runs for three weeks, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. I took the same class 2 years ago and really enjoyed it. So far it's been a… Continue reading Class at Madison College

Ipad Drawing of Back Alley in the Twin Cities

This is a new Ipad drawing from a photo I took about a year ago when I was in the Twin Cities for the big Rembrandt exhibit. This is about a block away from the Minnesota Institute of the Arts, where all the Rembrandts were. It was a great show and I learned a lot… Continue reading Ipad Drawing of Back Alley in the Twin Cities

How an Artist Does the Laundry

I'm at the point in my color studies where the assignment is to make color progressions that change hue, brightness, or saturation over a continuum. So I figured why make a household chore a study in color? I put all the neutrals on another line behind this one—sort of cheating, I guess.

Second Ipad Portrait of Richard

I worked on this because I wanted to try out some “new” techniques I saw in a video by west coast artist Shaddy Safadi about how to begin a digital landscape painting. I chose this picture because it had a very strong light-shadow pattern. Being a portrait instead of a landscape, the video didn't exactly… Continue reading Second Ipad Portrait of Richard

Portrait of a Friend

After my friend Richard saw a watercolor self-portrait I did a few weeks ago, he asked me to do his portrait and sent me some photographs to work from. He probably expected a watercolor, but this is the result, done using Procreate on my iPad. There's a lot more smoothing in this picture than I'm… Continue reading Portrait of a Friend

Mixing It Up

This is a half-hour traditional-media pencil and gouache sketch in my 5 x 8 Moleskin, with a little digital finish thrown in. In the original, the model's left arm didn't read right. So for the first time ever, I took a picture of the painting with my iPad camera, imported the image into the Procreate… Continue reading Mixing It Up

IPad Sketching in Chicago

Friday at the Palette and Chisel open studio I tried my first iPad sketches from the figure. This is the best of three attempts. The light lines are the first drawing, then I made a new layer and came back with a thicker line and started roughing in the shadows. Obviously, there's a lot of… Continue reading IPad Sketching in Chicago

Color Studies

Now for the real fun—I hope. After all those squares à la Josef Albers, this exercise is more along the lines of a real picture (exercises are from David Hornung's book, “Color: A Workshop for Artists and Designers”—see previous posts). The parameters are to use 6 or more colors, each twice, in order to get… Continue reading Color Studies