Well, I've finally got a sketch up for sale!

I did this one when I was up in Clare recently.

It's the second sketch I did that day and was much more difficult because of the size of the subject. I’ve never been great at drawing landscapes because I see too much detail and get the urge to draw it. But with this one I forced myself to focus on the major lines only… the plan was to use tone to give the impression of detail without having to draw everything. I began by examining the tree for basic shapes to give me the rough proportions so I wouldn’t extend beyond the frame of the paper. My basic layout consisted of four squares which I drew very lightly with a 4h (4H or 6H are my preferred sketching pencils because they don’t smudge and are easy enough to remove if you don’t press to hard when sketching, though they can be hard to see), anyway… I drew in four squares: one for the bottom of the tree trunk, then one for the major foliage in the centre, another for the upper foliage, and a small one for the top foliage. You might see what I was getting at if you look at the sketch below:

I was lucky enough that while I was sketching some sheep wandered by and milled around at the tree, so I quickly penned in a few, sticking to major shapes only. There was another one just above the last sheep on the right, but I didn’t add any pen to it because doing so would have thrown out the composition and forced me to delve further into the background to compensate… I was getting very cold hands so I wanted to get inside.

This one was done specifically with the intent of using white pencil for highlights, so when I’d sketched in the lines with my pen I washed over the whole drawing with a medium ink wash, then added the darker areas of tone with extra ink and cross-hatching. By this stage I was worried that I’d ruined the drawing, and I was regretting taking a chance to wash ink over the whole thing… but there was nothing I could do but wait, so I closed my sketchbook and waited for it to dry.

A few hours later a came back and added the white pencil (A STAEDTLER chinagraph 808. I bought it at Eckersley's Art and Craft Store, 21 Frome Street Adelaide SA 5000). The pencil is softer than a regular colouring pencil and goes on a bit like oil pastel. It’s not bad, but I found that it blunts very quickly and isn’t much good for fine work; however, it seemed to work okay in this drawing–though I could see that I was getting to the point of no return and had to stop myself from fiddling before the drawing was ruined. I only used it on the backs of the sheep, the trunk, the foliage and a few of the branches…

For the other sketch I did that day, and more, check out my personal blog at http://raphaelsabu.com

Well, it's time to start over with my eBay blog!

All the images were hosted by a site that I no longer have... so it was easier just to start again.

I still have my personal blog at http://raphaelsabu.com

Starting over has reminded me that I need to sell some more art!... eventually, lol.