Kevin and Kate

Here's a quick and simple drawing of a panda I did on my phone using the InspirArtion app. This is my first time using this app and, although the range of brush sizes is very limited and it does not allow me to rotate or crop the images afterwards, I think it serves its purpose as a digital sketchbook for the odd doodle here and there.  I want to try to draw and post more often, so my contributions will be simpler and more impulsive from now on.  Also, at 3 am, I look a little like this big old guy. #dark circles ~ Kate 

Here are a couple. When you get one of these small packs of felt-tips, and you're mainly doing portraits, you easily work through the more obvious skin colours, such as the maroon-orange-yellow of the second picture here. So, and you've seen this elsewhere as well as in the first picture, I've started monochromes with colours like blue and green. Now, when I decide to start with landscapes, I'll find that the greens are all gone...

If you're following these posts, you'll have begun to notice the ladder of horizontal lines going down each piece. I have always eyeballed my drawings - done them directly from pictures, even with the pen. While this is sufficient most of the time, the delicacy of a portrait means that finding a likeness to the subject is a matter of a millimeter or two. So I use the pencil ladders as a measuring technique. And it works.

Here's a lady with lots of buttons. Having only two blues in the set of brush pens, I thought I'd try and use grey as a blue, also. But it doesn't work. Got all the proportions right, though.

 A very simple drawing of the Atlantic Puffin coloured in with the Faber-Castell watercolour pencils. It didn't take very long at all and is the perfect example of a quick sketchbook drawing. I shouldn't have added water to the beak, because I did not do it well and I messed up the usually striking, colourful beak. If you haven't seen a photograph of a puffin carrying a beakful of fish, please go look it up now. It is one of the most oddly beautiful things I've seen. ~ Kate

  This is a silverback gorilla in coloured pencils. As you can see, I've been a bit liberal with the colours I've used, straying from the authentic black with a silvery back, but instead using a mixture of blues, yellows and browns. I used the Faber-Castell watercolour pencils for this and I've included pictures of the artwork before and after adding water to it. I pretty much 'freewheeled' it according to what looked right to me, which is why there may be a few errors here and there. If you have any tips on how to improve, I would welcome it.  When I think of these magnificent creatures, I'm always reminded of those scenes from Baby's Day Out when the gorilla at the zoo protects Baby Boo from the bad guys while he takes his afternoon nap. [She certainly deserved much better than that cage she was in but thankfully we know better now.]  The parental instinct is strong with these ones.  ~ Kate