Illustration Friday - surrender

I came up with a kinda funny idea for this topic. Not too original, I admit. And the execution leaves a lot to be desired... but it was fun all the same.

Illustration Friday - dusty

Dusty made me think about the mule trip I took down the Grand Canyon 3 years ago. I was wearing a white sun shirt which turned dest-red by the time I got to the bottom of the Canyon. There was no way I could do draw that. I figured the next best thing about a desert are cacti.

 

Flowering pear cacti - watercolor, color pencil.

Illustration Friday - chicken

 

Collage and watercolor.

Illustration Friday - mail

Collage with coffee-stained papers and found papers for this week's topic - mail.

Illustration Friday - prehistoric

Of course, the first thing that crossed my mind were dinosaurs. Predictable, I know. I decided to go with the flow and I completed the illustration with my left hand. This way, I can say it is not my fault the drawing is so-so, it is my left hand's fault :)

Illustration Friday - savour

I liked this week's topic, and I decided to try something different. I wanted to use different mediums to draw the same scene. I tried vine charcoal, graphite, pen, and ink. The results were terrible. Very dissapointing.

I then tried to draw the scene using an eyedropper. A picnic on a warm summer day, a good book, a bottle of wine and good food to savour ...

I added a bit o color to see the difference:

I think I still like the first one better.

Then, I taped the brush handle to another brush. The resulting tool had a handle of about 1.5 ft. and the resulting picnic scene is this:

 I might keep practicing drawing with the eyedropper and the long-handle brush, the results are interesting ...

Illustration Friday - sneak

 I wanted to skip this one, but free associating around the word, I remembered Zorro. He wears his mask and sneaks around at night to avenge the poor .. all that romantic stuff, especially when he looks like Antonio Banderas, right? So I made a cartoonish character inspired by Zorro.

 The line around the face was too thick, but I did not want to erase it. The whole look made me think of somebody with a toothache and the hear wrapped in a handkerchief. Or maybe that is a propeller that helps Zorro over the wall. Even better, this is Zorro-ant on his way to save the ant colony.

Illustration Friday - burning

I went about the usual way for this week's topic. I lookd up some quotes and I found a nice one by Leonard Cohen:

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.

I love the quote, but how am I going to go about drawing this? And as I pondered this question, I thought that maybe I should use a literal approach this time ... and I made three smoke paintings and three different types of paper: 

I revisited them with ink and charcoal:

I like the middle one. In the last one, I saw a figure on a chair draped in some kind of cloth, but I could not draw it, so I decide to "see" something else. Then the ink smudged and so now I have a face with moustache. Smoke painting is fun as long as it is done carefully. My first attempt burned, luckily I had a spray bottle handy...

Illustration Friday - afterwards

Once again, I had to use google for ideas. I found an interesting quote and, as always, my drawing qualities were inadequate for the challenge ... Here is the result:

I used Posemaniacs; I wanted to have Atlas crumbling under the weight of the world, and then raising up. I settled for a crawling Atlas. Ink and dip pen; I tried some new nibs I bought.

The world breaks everyone and afterwards, many are stronger at the broken places.

E. Hemingway

Illustration Friday - spent

When I read the topic of the week, the only things that came to mind were spent candels. Not much to go with, so I summoned google to the rescue and looked for quotes with "spent". Lo and behold, I found this one:

"Time spent with cats is never wasted." S. Freud

Not exactly what I would expect from Mr. Freud! I thought it was too funny to let it pass. I thought about drawing my cat sleeping on the sofa, but he refused to pose for the occasion. I wish I could say that the cat pose was my idea, but it was not. I drew it from a picture.I used pen, watercolor, acrylic ink.  Here is the result:

 

Illustration Friday - racing

I am late posting this one. Drawing made from a picture from my last race.

 This is yours truly at mile ... dunno ... maybe 17 or so ... of the Hartford marathon. No, I do not have a woden leg, but I am sure that by that time, my legs did feel like wood. Or concrete.
Whenever I check the links posted for illustrations, I feel like giving up. I draw like a three years old...people make such neat stuff over there it's amazing.

Illustration Friday - Beneath

No idea what to draw for "beneath". I could not find a decent quote or anything funny. OK. I did not look too long. I found "The ground beneath her feet" - novel by Salman Rushdie. I did not read it. In the end, my feet won. While I was talking on the phone with a friend, I dreaw a bling contour drawing of my feet on the floor. At least they result looks like feet - not mine though!

Illustration Friday - Old-fashioned

I had no idea what to make for this topic. OK. That is not true, I had ideas, but they were all too complicated for my meagre drawing skills. I googled the topic and I found out that apparently the first cocktail invented was called "old-fashioned". Easy enough to come up with something. Then, I remembered about this old-fashined gesture of a gentleman kissing the hand of a lady. Nowadays, the gestures is almost embarassing, especially in North America where manners I are gone...I for one, like to be trated in this old-fashioned way.

The size was a challenge here as each drawing is about 2.5 x 3.5 and I don't usually do anything so small.

Illustration Friday - Acrobat

Fun topic and in my mind's eye, the sketch was fun too. As in real life, the results are not what one hoped for. When I went to Punta Cana last year, I decided to try flying the trapeze and I had some pictures taken. I used one of these pictures as an inspiration for a contour drawing of a trapeze acrobat. For the background, I glued some of the papers I made last week. This certainly is not what I imagined ... but such is life. These days it seems that whenever I try to make something, the result just isn't there. Luckily, tomorrow is another day... after all, a coat of gesso can fix the acrobat with arms too thin, torso too short and legs too long. If only all life's problems could be fixed so easily ...

Illustration Friday - Dessert

I am late this week... I had to improvise and draw from memory because I checked the theme too late - I had already eaten the dessert! Well deserved though - if I say so myself - after 32 km run. It was a chocolate mousse from La Fayette shaped as a mountain with some snow on the top. Simple enough to not pose too many problems to the begginer artist ...

Illustration Friday - Immovable

I was immovable in my quiet contemplation of this week's topic. Clueless. Immovable?! Seriously? After the initial shock, my brain slowly started to compute. I decided to go with an evolutionary theme - new born, toddler, teen, adult, old. Nothing is immovable, right? The only certitude in life is change. I wanted a quote to accompany my sketch, but the one I found prompted me to change my illustration.

I did not know who Lawrence J. Peter was; turns out he was an educator best known for the Peter Principle:

 "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence ... in time every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties ... Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence."

So true ...

Illustration Friday - Atmosphere

This was the theme from last Friday. I had no clue what to do, so I searched Google Images until something sparked an idea. I had a scrap of watercolor paper previously used for a failed attempt at face painting; I prepped it the usual way - lots of washes of Golden fluid acrylics on top of left over papers from the last Crusade . Then I traced the shape of the body using an eyedropper and blotted it with tissue paper. I applied some matte medium over the body because I wanted it to be pushed somewhat in the background - more foggy, veiled, atmospheric if you wish.This did not work too well in my opinion. I added a bit of Pan pastel here and there and also outlined another body in the background, it seemed to be almost the same as the focal image, its shadow ... Here it is:

 Now if onlu I figure out how to make it into a decent thumbnail to post on their website ...

Illustration Friday - Star Gazing

I have never participated in this project before and I was not planning to. It just happened. I noticed the topic pf the week - Star gazing. I had gessoed a small piece of cardboard and Icreated a bit of texture in the wet gesso by pressing some textured plastic. Then, I saw the two "friends" and I thought they would make a nice focal point for star gazing. I outlined the shapes in watercolor.

Then, I applied various layers of colored pencil, acrylic washes and pen. So here are the friends watching the stars together.