Dogs

Cameron, it turns out, is working her way through Drawing Lab and looking for company. And while I tend to do exercises as they strike me, not in order, and while I'm not sure I'll do one a week like she is, I went ahead and did Lab #6, "Index Card Multiples," over the weekend. You're supposed to start with a simple line drawing of a dog and a stack of twenty index cards and a big fat marker, and then draw that dog twenty times. This forces you to let go of detail--you're working small with a big marker. So I stacked up my cards, used the fat end of a marker, which still wasn't as big as a chisel-point marker, found a reference picture or two of a dog I liked, and got to it.

That's the whole twenty of them, plus my handknit socks (I was standing on the stool to get the picture). Also my coffee mug in the top right corner. I would grind to a miserable halt without coffee. Anyway, sometimes I tried to use the fattest part of the marker to force myself to let go of those details I was getting hung up on--I was working from a photograph, not a simple line drawing. Plus the photo I picked was of a BIG dog, and I was having a hard time fitting him onto an index card. Here's a closer look at the first ten.

And the final ten.

For the first one of this group I switched photos, to a close-up of the dog's face, but then I went back to the full-body photo, changing the orientation of the cards for five drawings to try to get more of the dog's body in--which, when I was drawing it, looked all different from what you think it looks like, just like hands and arms, when we really look at them to try to draw them, look sort of awkward and wrong. Anyway. These are my twenty big-dog sketches using big marker on small index cards.

I have lots of things to share this week--I've gotten four postcards in the mail so far, each one is lovely and happy-making, and I'm thinking at the end of the week I'll post what I've received by that point. I have some knitted stuff to show, and some embroidered stuff too...I'm having fun.

Oh, almost forgot! The dog is Elizabeth's dog Henry. I love his expressions. The two photos are this one and this one. And I'm linking up with Cameron's Lab #6 post here.