Watercolor Tree Sketch

Watercolor is very nice for sketching. Here is a small crabapple tree, done with a few loose layers of watercolor paints. Simple and pleasant. I did a graphite sketch first. Then drew a few pale lines in pencil on the watercolor paper to act as guidelines for my washes. Mainly to remind me of where the highlights of the branches should be. A few details were added with a small brush. And then a few little background shapes, suggestive of plants or distant foliage, to ground the tree and make it seem connected with Earth.

Avian Anatomy

This is a drawing of the articulated skeleton of the rufous-sided towhee.

Bird Skull Drawing

This is a drawing in process: first the sketch, rendered approximately life size. Then the next is a carbon dust drawing done at the same size. The bones are all in place, but it's too small for all the details of the smaller bones. Now I am working on a scaled up version which will allow me to draw in the details of the small bones.

Best in Show!

The drawing, "Back Alley Grandma, Varanasi" (shown below) won the top prize, Best in Show, in the 5th Annual Colorado Drawing Exhibition. 

Back Alley Grandma, Varanasi

This is a finished graphite drawing of another travel photo from India. The subject was a grandmother and family who lived in one of the alleys of Varanasi. Like most women of India, the colors worn in the Sari were outstanding. The continuous tone blending of the graphite helps to soften the impact of the black-and-white image. This image was juried into the 5th Annual Colorado Drawing Exhibition May 23-June 27, 2008.

A Range of Tones

This was a fun graphite toning exercise. Working through the range of tones on each oak leaf was entertaining. I used 2H, HB, and 2B pencils for this range of tones.