The purpose of a sketch a day is just to do it - sketch! It doesn't matter if it is an involved sketch or if it is a simple contour or gesture drawing. There are no rules except to sketch each day.
Life parameters can dictate the time investment, but a sketch a day commitment is designed to elevate the personal priority of sketching ... to enforce sketching. Making it into a "resolution" validates the activity (invests it with a bit of a challenge even!) and defends against competing demands. The sketch a day is designed for practice - to reinforce basic skills, and to provide daily contemplation on the issues of two dimensional representation.
Several of us are doing a sketch a day, and I would enjoy hearing from anyone else who decides to join in. We share our efforts, support each other, keep each other honest and... hopefully we'll have some fun doing this!
Click on any of the sketches to enlarge...
and don't forget to check out older posts!
your highlights look great! I've been using the Koh-I-Noor woodless colored pencils, which are Very soft, softer than Prismacolors, and I can't make the highlights with them over the darks. I had to resort to a white oil pastel. I love this drawing, especially the detail you got in the wood, but I kind of wish you had used color instead of graphite for the wood. (sorry!)
ReplyDeleteAh - No, no... I enjoy comments that share what you don't like or where I could have missed seeing or doing something, too. I didn't use the graphite on the wood though (surprise!)... I used it only on the edge between the tomatoes and the shadows because the soft darks wouldn't move in close enough and this was in the sun so the shadows were sharp under the tomatoes and dark. I used two greys and a silver for the wood because it's very weathered and has become silver with sun and age. In fact it's almost driftwood - it washed up on the beach after a big storm, and has been dragged up into the yard for a second life as a sunset viewing seat. It might be cypress.
ReplyDeleteI have only tried the black woodless pencil, I think. I do remember using one for a sketch after you had been using some and commenting on them. I remember thinking I did like it. I can't see any reason not to use oil pastel or whatever gets the job done unless there were some archiving issue (which I doubt). Speaking of which, when you use oil pastels do you use fixative? Do you leave them in a sketch book or would they get too rubbed?
For my own part, I mainly don't like the way the cherry tomato sits in there too close behind the yellowy green tomato... it's flattened, and I didn't deal with any shadow from the yellow onto it... Probably at least in part because I had just sketched in the cherry tomatoes and the next day substituted some others for them, and didn't put a yellowy tomato there to look at and see the subtle interactions...
ReplyDeleteAlso, I'm looking down on them from sitting on the boards myself, but I should have pushed the farther portion of the board down better... softened it, perhaps.