Leeds Pride Festival 2010

The last visit of the Leeds Savages, was to the Leeds Pride festival. As a challenge, a few of us bought along oil pastels. I have never used these things before, but it was a good bit of fun

Rieaulx abbey Warm Up Sketch

I have a fair backlog of pictures to update. June and the start of July have been extremely busy. to start with, here is just a quick warm up sketch at Riveaulx Abbey which is the furthest Leeds Savage Expedition to date.

Singer Sewing Warm Up

There’s a sentence you don’t say everyday. I have been  a bit late posting these up as for the last two weeks, was working on putting together the stupendous Leeds Savage Ebook - DOWNLOAD its free.

Onto the drawing, a warm up sketch of some Singer sewing machines done at Armley Industrial museum at a Savage meet.  the museum seems to be a little unloved, but looks to have a great lot of interesting things there. I am looking forward to going back there and spending some more time. One piece of advice for the museum is lower the entrance fee.

Speed Sketch #7

This time with the  Leeds Savage Club it was off to Round Hay Park and like doing the speed sketch at Kirkstall, lots of distance!. One observation though,  it seemed everyone was waking  left to right. There were very few people walking the other way.

Out of interest as well, I decided to see what all my speed sketches of people of Leeds would look like together, which you can see here

Speed Sketch #6

Another Leeds Savage Club Meet, this time at Kirkstall Abbey. Nice thing about doing this speed sketch, was plenty of distance! Where I have done similar sketches before, its been a bit of a fixed distance, but here they were all over the place.

Bonus points if you can spot which one of these people were a fellow Leeds Savage Club Member

Warm up exterior sketch of Temple Works

A very quick warm up sketch done of the exterior of Temple  Works in Leeds, done as part of a Leeds Savage meet to the building.

A phrase heard quite a few times over the visit, was “A lot of straight lines”

Speed Sketches Victoria Hotel

Phew, February was an extremely busy month, March is not looking of any sign of easying up, but it has all been for a good cause. The Leeds Savage Club is now up and running. Its a bit cables and wires at the moment, but keep checking back to that link.

This Sunday just gone, was the first meet of the sketchers, now under the Savage banner. Six of us turned up to the Victoria Hotel in George street to do some sketching. To the right is my warm up.

Eric Kenningtons 'The War God'

A very quick sketch of the statue ‘The War God’ at Leeds Art Gallery.  You can see the original here . I was at the gallery for, the very last Leeds Sketchers Meet, which was appropriate, as it was where the first one was inFebruary last year. Though it is the last ‘Leeds Sketchers Meet’, it is not the last time we are meeting. We will be meeting in March under the name, The Leeds Savage Club.  Check out this link after the 3rd of March for details.

Armoured Glove - Warm Up Sketch

The Second meet of the Leeds Sketching group 2010, and this time it was off to the Royal Armouries.

The left, is a quick warm up sketch of a 15th century armoured glove. The glove is part of a half set of armour, which I continued to draw in my next drawing.

Latin Rock #2

Back to the Latin Rock for a warm up. This time, I used just an HB and and a 2H pencil in this sketch, concentrating more on the detail. In fact, went to town a bit and it would be fair to say I overdid it.

I am also involved in the running of the Leeds writing group , I write fiction mainly set in the Belle Epoque, which you can find over here at The Dead Adventurers Club . I mention this, as I’m currently looking at bringing the two under the same umbrella. Watch this space

Latin Rock

I’ve retired my one arm manikin for now, and have a new model for my warm up excerises. Say Hello to the Latin Rock! This rock I picked up when I was in Canada and visting Mt.Revelstoke . Its a piece of Hematite and I don’t know why, I haven’t thought of using it to draw before as its absolute great.

Firstly, with the aide of a torch I can create hundreds of different shapes, I’ve posted a few pictures up here on flickr, such as this one to show you what I mean.

Secondly, there is the surface;One side of the rock, the iron ore is exposed and is rich in reds and brown and relatively smooth. The other side, is grey and looks like its gone through some heat and compression, which has left grooves and layers.

Thirdly, Its small and fits nicely on the shelve next to my desk and it was free. What more could you want ?

For my first drawing, I thought I would get out just the B pencils that I  use and not worry about detail or shape so much,but instead focus on where I would use those pencils on the drawing.

Blind Sketch #8

As you can see he is still missing an arm.

I have added to the right hand side of my blog – right near the bottom, a blog roll for some other artists blogs that I follow.

The artists are all of different abilities and the main reason I have chosen to follow them is I find their commentary refreshing and honest.

Its not very prominent at the moment, If someone knows of a good wordpress plug in for blogrolls let us know, drop us a comment.

Blind Sketch #7

Yet to replace my Manikin so he is still missing one arm. When I  do finally get around to replacing it, may go for a hand manikin

Blind sketch #6

Noooo! the right arm fell of my Manikin as I went to draw it this morning. It has served us well and may it rest in peace.

One thing I would like to use this space to say, is I have been reading quite a few drawing blogs recently. Both people who are learning to draw and people giving out instruction. There seems to be an awful lot made of this blind sketching and as it reads, a lot of it seems pseudo science.

Reason I do it , as with any other warm up excercise is to loosen up the hand a bit before diving into a drawing and the other thing is trying to improve hand eye co-ordination and that’s it.

Some of these posts that go on 400 words about right hand side of the brain malarkey etc , just seems to be nonsense and making something more complex than It actually is.  The sad thing is, I have read blog posts from people drawing that they are worried they are not engaging there right brains enough, I kid thee not.

Blind Sketching  = Loosen up hand , improve eye hand co-ordination – thats it.

My two pence.

Speed Sketches #4

I came across Posemaniacs which is a site that has a flash application in which it will show you a random human pose on screen which changes to a time interval you specify.

I don’t think it beats actually going outside and drawing real people but it is good for getting angles you would not normally consider, and it can be done at the comfort of you own desk.

I found out about the site from a blog entitlted Art School at Home, which is an interesting read as the writer is trying to improve their drawing skills and is being quite self disciplined about it. Their commentary is particular enjoyable.

Blind Sketch #5

I am really enjoying thias as an excecise as the results seem to make no friggin sense!

I think when I get enough of these, may have to put them in some sort of morphing type animation.

In other news, where I mentioned about Yves Tanguy in my post about the ossicles – stapes , for those of you in Leeds, in the Henry Moore Institute, there is currently one of his paintings which will be there till January 2010 as part of their sculpture in painting exhibition which is well worth checking out.

Blind Sketch #4

Mmm, not as bad as last time, though cannot say overall whether this is an improvement or not… time will tale.

Blind Sketch #3

Eek !

I don’t think my last two blind sketch attempts have been that bad, but this one is all over the place.

So the question is, whether the first two were just ‘blind luck’ or this one is freakishly out of place.

Time will tell.

Blind Sketch Manikin

Another go at a blind sketch and the first post on wordpress. I am hoping that the move has made searching the site a bit more easier and a bit more user friendly. I am unsure if i will stick with this theme, but it will do for the time doing.

I am currently working my way slowly back through the posts to tidy them up a bit , if you spot any errors then let me know

Once again using my trusted manikin as a model and I will track these sketches over the next few months.

In other news, moving this blog over to wordpress hosting soon, if you are reading this, and its already on wordpress. Any problems jsut shout.

Well, this blog in someways has served it purpose as no longer stagnant with them. However, Looking at my webstats I am actually quite surprised by the daily traffic coming to this site.

So thought i would chuck on a couple of more images and will try and get at least once a month an image on here.

Just to chuck in a gratuitis plug, Ive also started a short story blog over here

So to start off this session a quick gesture sketch. Again have that problem of worrying about running out of paper, hence the squashed legs

More of the same.

Very quick sketches of people looking at the works in the gallery. the guy in the middle constantly kept moving, but thankfully kept the same sort of pose the whole time

Attended this Sunday just gone, the first meeting of the Leeds Sketching Group (link on the right) we went to Leeds Art Gallery and for a warm up, there is a bust at the top of the stairs which i did this sketch on. Used a 2B pencil instead of my usual preferred 4B. Thats my story and Im sticking to it

New Session, again the Mummy drawing to loosen up. The Manikin was meant to be walking away, so can safely call that a cock up!

This time working from a photograph, also used some construction lines to get the mid points, but loose out on the proportions of the legs

Just a bit of a warm up, I like this exercise, just doing a quick gesture sketch without taking the pen of the paper. From this attempt,  instantly I can see I am being too hard with the pencil.