The result of gestures...

Gesture drawings are great practice for more serious drawings. Here are a couple of sketches that are direct results of plenty of gesture drawing and lots of drawing in general.























For drawing with pencil or graphite, I always have a wide range of art pencils available. The leads vary in hardness and the things you can do with art pencils as opposed to a regular HB pencil are pretty amazing. My favorites are the very soft graphite leads like EB or EE pencils. Graphite sticks also give a wider range of use than an HB pencil.

Another contour and some gestures...

I edited my pics and put one that was with contours into my gesture post. I like to draw random people around busy places, like the university I attended. The fact that they are oblivious to me and going about their business forces me to get them down on paper quickly. I find this helps my gestures portray movement or feeling more than if my models know I am drawing them and are posing for me.

Contour Drawings

The formal definition of a contour drawing is: The outline and other visible edges of a mass, figure or object. (from ARTLEX)

Contours for me are the essential shape of things. If you can draw the contour of an object and transform it to 2 dimensional form you can begin to see the shapes within the object. Contours are about line and not shading, and it is the thickness of line that gives the illusion of depth.

Here are some examples I have done.







The last two are from the same pile of orange peel. The very last is not a contour but I thought I would include it for interest sake. Many artists draw multiple variations of the same subject matter.

Another from the sketchbook.

This was a quick sketch I did using some beautiful conte pencils my Mother in law brought me back from her last trip home to the Czech Republic.
Conte is like chalk only harder. In Canada, if you can find coloured conte it is usually in stick form. These pencils are amazing and the things I can do with them certainly surpass pencil crayons.
The website for Creta color has them listed as "hard pastel pencils".
I've found Aquarell pencils and crayons in art supply stores but I've never found anything like these pencils.

Smudgers are a good investment if you work in charcoal, graphite, conte, chalk, or pastel.

I still like my fingers for smudging best, but a smudger can give a bit more control and precision than fingers can.

A few from my sketchbook.

The chip pile up at the mill camp I worked at last year.











Egyptian art has always fascinated me. The artistic conventions of how people and gods could be depicted were very strict. This is Anubis and Bast. Anubis weighs the hearts of the dead and feeds those he finds lacking to a monster. Bast protects women and children.

Self portrait in a mirror. My self portraits always have a sibling resemblance to me. My concentration is evident in my expression too!


I love birds and these were just some random sketchings from memory.


Another random sketching from memory.