Things to Draw

Whenever I see pictures of artist's sketchbooks, usually on Instagram, I think 'I should probably do that'. I think it's a good idea to keep your drawing skills in check if you're an artist.
A little while ago I stumbled on Phil McAndrew's Big List of Stuff to Draw which has 400 drawing prompts. I found an old sketchbook and decided to start working through the list whenever I feel like drawing something. I started the list going in order, but now I don't mind skipping prompt if they don't inspire me.

I decided not to stick to one style of drawing to make things more interesting, so I've got realistic sketches, simple line drawings, colour pieces and drawings with added watercolour paint.

Here's some of the ones I've done so far.

Trophies - Naked People - Sad People - Your Neighbours

Dogs - Bicycles - All of the houses you've lived - Statues

Follow me on Instagram @lisagharrold to see new drawings and other updates!

Water Colour & Fineliner

I've been noticing some cool paintings of houses using water colour and pen over the top and wanted to try it for myself.

I started with a house that I know - the house I stayed in in Norwich during my 3 years at university. I found the house on Google street view and drew it out on to water colour paper. Then I painted it with water colour paints and went over the lines with a fineliner. The good thing about the pen I used is that it's waterproof which meant I could go back and add some more paint if I needed to with the water making the pen ink smudge.

Here's a video of how I did it:

I really liked how my first attempt turned out so I searched for another house to paint. I found this house randomly on Google street view somewhere in California. It's crazy to me that houses like this exist on a regular street.

I then did another painting using the same technique, this time working from a photo I'd taken at a beach. Using the fineliner pen worked really well to capture all the little details of the boat and the fishing cages.

Birthday Drawing

My boyfriend's birthday was last month and I had no idea what to get him. Shopping for boys is hard!

So I whipped up some art. To him it says super thoughtful, but for me it's the easy option.

I picked a photo from a recent selfie session and cropped it to make it a bit more artsy, then I just drew it out using sketching pencils.

I bought a frame to put the drawing in - so it wasn't a complete cheapo present - and it fits in really well with the rest of his room.

And guys, that globe is also a lamp. Whaaaaa!

Ladies, what presents do you get for your guys? Cos I've got no clue for the next time I have to buy him a gift.

Drawing Practice

Recently at work I've had the job of going through a whole stack of really old catalogues of stock images for anything that the students might be able to use. Most of them are just full of really random images that make me wonder why anyone would photograph that, like the above pictures that I cut out because they made me laugh so much.

Having seen all the drawing the students do I've decided I need get back into that so I took one of the catalogues home to use for drawing practice.

I've been experimenting with pencil and biro drawings and using watercolours as a background wash and for details.

What's good about drawing random models is that I don't worry about the drawing looking exactly like the person because noone's going to know what they're supposed to look like.

Learning Characters

One of my projects over the Easter holidays was to create this 'Learning Powers Family' for school.

I started by making some rough sketches of the family.

I then did a final drawing of each character which I photographed.

I loaded the photos on to a computer programme called Revelation Natural Art which allowed me to trace to drawing and then add the colour. It was similar to the way I made my Disney colouring pictures.

Each character has a different learning power. Here's Creative Christopher the Granddad, and Curious Carl the younger brother.

Ink Tree

This tree is one of the activities I planned for the children's art workshops I did the week before last. There are three stages to making it.

First I put several blobs of ink (I used sepia calligraphy ink) across the top half of the paper. Then I blew through a plastic straw, spraying the ink upwards in different directions. This makes the branches.

Using a brush I connected all the ink splatters together and painted the tree trunk.

For extra details I used a wooden kebab skewer dipped in ink to draw on to the trunk of the tree.

I also blew the ink to make the tree roots.

I love how this picture is made from just one kind of ink but the different techniques used make it look really varied.