Keeping Skeletons

Why you should keep skeletons 

Skeletons are a cute little nickname I have given to line art drawings or wire frame drawings. I find that they are to simplified to be called sketches - sketches I believe have more details, depth if you will. 
Many artists employ the habit of creating and keeping reference libraries to assist with their art practises. These Art Libraries vary from Artist to Artist and may include such things as; personal and stock photo's,  pages torn from magazines, textures, abstract images, inspiring works of other artists etc. Many artist keep journals to make sketches, preliminary works, thumbnails of ideas or images they see, hear or imagine - these too are art libraries.

You can create your own art library in a variety of ways:

• in actual folders, kept on a bookshelf or in a filing cabinet
• in a journal/diary/scrapbook/molskin
• on your hard drives, USBs, CDs

Which ever method you chose to store your library make it work for you, use it and add to it as often as possible - the benefits are tremendous.

Use it to 

• Boost your creativity
• Save time on future projects
• Build and Develop your skills

What you keep in your Art Library is completely up to you. But here are some suggestions.

• Photo's
• Sketches - Advanced line drawings with tonal values
• Skeletons - Basic line drawings
• Textures
• Patterns
• Inspirational works by other Artists

How you organise them is up to you - I suggest you keep different folders for each of these things and depending on the size of your library you may want to include some sub-folders

Remember don't confine yourself or your library to one source for references. Take references from everywhere.

-NikitaRose

I have spent a wonderful day off

Today I woke early even though it's technically my day off from the shop. I walked to the post office and collected my Instant Lab - Impossible Projects which I received from a kickstarter project pledge that helped bring it into existence! Which is almost as cool as the thing itself. As tempting as it was to run straight home with it to play I had more things I wanted to do first. So with instalab in hand I jumped on the bus to the city and disembarked at southbank. It was the first time since moving back here. It felt so good to be there again but it also reminded me of how long it's been since I was here. I spoke with the lady at the student centre and hopefully my enrolment will be reinstated and I can return for first semester 2014. Then I took southbank to the bridge and into the city for some adelaide street sushi.

Ah perfection

xo

What you have and what you do

Recently I have been reading the Coloured Pencil Painting Bible by Alyona Nickelson - I should say re-reading it! It is quite an informative book and so is her website. I see she has now branched out from still life's to portraits (hard to believe she creates them with pencil! Genius!)

Reading it for the first time a few years back, was when I discovered the true extent of possibilities of coloured pencils. Before this book I can honestly say I had not thought of using the medium for more than sketching with. 

I believe I can mark it as a corner stone in my art development. I'm more open to the possibilities accessible in art (which truly are infinite). Which brings me to this post on - using what you've got and making the most out of it. 

I am one of those artists that seem to acquire several tonnes of art equipment but tend to think that they don't have the "right" tool or need this or that. So today, I have removed my excuses and am making use of what I have available to me.   

I refuse to use the excuses such as

I don't have the right paper

I don't have a good idea

Today I am willing to say I have more than enough supplies, tools, equipment and ideas to try something new. 

Using Alyona's book as a guide I started sketching in Photoshop one of her exercises twin cherries from page 120. 

But why? I hear you say, if she is a talented COLOURED PENCIL ARTIST who's book is all about COLOURED PENCILS am I doing her exercise digitally?

Well firstly, and this is not an excuse, merely fact, I don't have the right paper. I have sketchbook paper, which might work okay, but I also have a second reason, I wanted to record a video.

I wanted record my progress through this exercise and I felt (for now at least) the easiest way would be in Photoshop.

First off I went in search of a colour pencil palette for Photoshop also known as a Colour Swatch file (.aco). I found one version of colour pencil colour swatch for Photoshop online, which I used in the first attempt. I however, found they were too washed out in colour for my tastes and decided to create one myself. 

new brighter colour swatches similar to the colour choices available in coloured pencil ranges

To get a closer match to the coloured pencils I'm used to, I used a scrap page from my art diary and made colour swatches of all the pencils from one of my coloured pencil sets.

As you can see the "Orange" doesn't look orange at all... 

I had to scan this one separately to get a better colour scan

I then scanned this in to the computer and opened the file in Photoshop, after some minor adjustments I used the colour picker to create a new colour swatch for Photoshop. Some colours didn’t scan too well – orange especially.

And started the exercise again. I am much happier with the second attempt and I learnt much about colour interaction from the exercise.

New Sketches for class

The Eyes

Okay so my lovely friend Larissa has volunteered to be my first face to sketch. I have been late in posting this I know because I have been enjoying some time away from the laptop and out in the sun. I have also been spending some time visiting museums in florence. Oh how I have been enjoying myself. I have made a small sketch of my friend however and I will post it below

Lovely Larissa

I have also been sketching while reading my new book I bought while at the museum. The book is called The human figure by John H. Vanderpoel life drawing for artists. So far I have read the eye chapter and here are some sketches that I did to understand the text better.

Photography Day

The following photo's are my first ones taken with my new camera I have never owned a DSLR before and I have only used one briefly for an assignment one semester so I spent a few hours playing with it and googling tutorials and then my roommate and I went to the park to test it out.

The dorm room pot plant 

using the macro function

blurring the background 

Red foliage against the blue sky

In Milan the weather is very temperamental right now changing from spring to cold and miserable winter 

playing with the blurring technique

Macro setting

I am excited to take this with me to Tuscany and taking beautiful photos of all that I see. I am looking forward to exploring the world of DSLR.

--NikitaRose

Almost daily 01

Sketching almost daily... Starting with abstract shapes to create the overall dynamic shape of the image. Exploring without reference, referencing only with the mind and drawing the image out of the blank canvas. whilst painting I was pondering, What am I doing? Where am I going? Where am I going to take this? Not just this image but with my life. Should I continue with this? or should I look at a different journey?

--NikitaRose

A Sketchbook page from today

I met this little guy while at the Louvre recently I just love how cheeky he is. A quick sketch, unfinished still finding the form but I wanted to post his cuteness.