Future sketch for practice painting

So around the end of October/beginning of November, I started working on a sketch for a future project.

I had a little alone time, when my husband was out for a while, so I grabbed my sketchbook and did some very light, scrawled/loose sketching in blue pencil. One in particular stood out to me and I considered using that. My husband was immediately drawn to it as well without my pointing it out, so I decided to run with it.

The sketch was about 3.5″ x 3.5″ and as I said, very light and loosely scrawled. A lot of my thumbnails and artistic notes are things only I could make out or understand. So I not only needed to enlarge (and lengthen from a square to a portrait-sized rectangle), but also work in the detail better.

I scanned the image and did my usual trick of playing with the color/hue and contrast, then enlarged it to fit on an 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper. It was a cluttered and “noisy” image with paper shadows everywhere, making it hard to see the sketchlines or create more in regular pencil, so I grabbed a thin and thick Sharpie marker and scrawled more definite lines. I then scanned that, and printed it out to my usual 11″ x 14″ size.

It was still cluttered and also had many errors, so I used my lightbox and transferred it to a clean sheet of paper and fixed the lines and cleaned up the mess better using a blue pencil, then went over those lines with 4B and F pencils.

Not only transferring lines in blue pencil to a fresh sheet of paper, but turning the lightbox off and completely redrawing parts to fix them.

This is what I ended up with here.

That seems like a lot of work, and I admit it was a little extra than I would have normally done.

I’ve been feeling a lot more out of sorts lately — I have things on my mind, and after finishing my last drawing I started getting a bit hard on myself. Too much pressure. So I tried loosening up, not allowing myself to get bent out of shape over errors or sloppy work. There was a bit of fighting (after the Sharpie sketching stage, I was really starting to hate the image), but then I finally settled in, relaxed, and enjoyed the process.

I kept the lines very basic and simple. I haven’t painted (acrylic) regularly in a very long time, and I’d like to get back to painting again (I would also work in watercolor and gouache and miss those too). I was curious to see if I could get my printer to work with some watercolor paper I had, and was shocked it fed it through without jamming.

The scanned pencil sketch printed out on artists watercolor paper (not normally meant for printers). It’s been so long since I last painted in acrylics, I wanted to practice technique without wasting time transferring to a scrap sheet, or skipping ahead and potentially risking a canvas when I’m not feeling up to it yet for various reasons.

So now I have something to play with and practice technique again, and figure out colors. I hope to eventually transfer to an actual canvas for the “real” thing when I’m ready. I’m just not sure when that will be. I need to figure out what paints and brushes I have and can use (and what needs to be thrown away), and restock more stuff. That’s why I’ve stuck mostly to ink and black and white art — a lot of the old supplies aren’t in working condition anymore.

My drawing table is starting to get covered in projects at various stages — one needing to be framed, another needs to be continued, and the last one has just been started. I need to stay focused better, I think. 😉

So I still need to get a portfolio and some frames for finished art, and start tackling the ever-growing pile of in-progress art.