Early Morning in Ikea Cafe

Deserted Ikea, right after the opening, gave me kind of surrealistic feeling. Empty rooms, which are always so alive and crowded, were calm and lonely. Cafe, silent and loaded with food. Little version of planet Earth after the end of times.

Ordinary disastrous every day events in my country and overall rise of temperature in the world completely washed away my wish to express myself in blogging. But suddenly the spammers helped. The amount of spam became unbearable, which usually shows that blog is forgotten by its owner and needs revival. So here I am, drawing, painting, blogging. I hope you are all right out there, my friends.

Lilac and Yellow Girl

That was fun task from my "ideas basket": I had to use two, light and dark, pastel sticks, 10 various papers and to draw human figure (from reference), composing into the paper.
Experience of losing control and going with the flow is priceless.

Tonal Values Study

My Lamy Safari pen and burnt sienna ink in the tonal value study. The task is to use 3 values: dark, midtone and light.

Winter Clothes

 I have drawn my reliable friends before sending them into depth of the wardrobe for nearest half or more year: duck down coat, velvet trousers, fur boots and little but warm H&M wool beanie.

Hands Study in Charcoal

I back to painting and blogging and so happy about it.

3x 30 Minutes Portraits.

 I am still in the middle of 6 weeks Drawing Course (Amazon link here).  Day 9 offers to draw portraits in pencil, ink and charcoal, each session no longer than 30 minutes.

You think I am narcissistic artist, drawing myself three times in a row? No, I am not - where else can one find more obedient and disciplined model for artful experiments, than in the mirror?
I like the one in the middle - big eyes, no wrinkles, nice hairdo. But my mom says, that the first one is the closest resembling of her dearest daughter.

Dashboard

14x20cm

Waiting in the car in the dark is not good for sketching but very good for time killing.

Sunflower

It is my second attempt to catch beauty and freedom of nature's creature.

Figure Sketches

Another attempt to draw human figure in 1, 3, 5 and 15 minutes.
I get so tired and washed out at the end of the 2,5 hours session. Such a  difficult subject human body is. And so beautiful.

Figures of Posemaniacs.com

Posemaniacs.com is always there to help us with figure drawing.

Back to Blogging

Jvary is the church of 7th century near Tbilisi, Georgia (Wiki link here). It is constructed on top of mountain and overlooks the place where two rivers meet. It is so breathtaking beautiful!

I was in Georgia on my winter holidays, more sketches from the trip to follow.

Photo by Jemal Kasradze (www.jemalkasradze.blogspot.com)

How were you the month passed?
My interruption from blogging was so useful. I allowed myself to have a rest, to stop and to think about my weblife and how it affected my real life. I will be happy to share my "deep thoughts" in my next posts and hope that my experience will be useful to you too. 
  

Folds

70x90 O/C

1,5 month passed after my last publication. Looks like it was yesterday. Something happened to the time, for certain, I am not sure that there are still 60 minutes in an hour, maybe half of these minutes are gone.. What's about your time?

Only few works to show to you today. Most of my time I was busy in the office, at home, no interest, energy and time for drawing. I hope this mood will gone away together with November!

The "Folds" oil painting is done in art class, it is 90x70cm. My first experience in painting big.
And few sketches of boats, inspired by this post of John Lovett (here), who made photos of Venetian boats with persistence and attention of a true artist I dream to have.

And the last one is the flower on the windowsill.

Thank you, my dear friends, for your concern and attention to my absence. I promise to be back as soon as my creativity awakes from this protracted hibernation and apathy.

All the best to you!

Crocus Expo

I had a pause in my work, it gave me one hour of sketching of what I see around me. That time I saw a detail of cafe in the exhibition fairground during its break between the work hours.

My Blog is Awarded!

Carol King decided that my blog is liebster=darling blog and nominated me with this award. Thank you Carol so much!

Now 5 darling blogs to pass the award to (how to choose only 5 among great blogs I read??? I do not know, but I'm trying)  Susan, Tomas, Edgar and Suzanne, Nina, Petrea. Not sure about their "darling" state, but sure every time it's joy and inspiration to see updates in these blogs.

and 5 facts about me.
1. I feel so good in big city. Do not believe me if I start complaining about lack of fresh air, or heavy traffic and crowds.
2. I prefer tomatoes to cucumbers, cats to dogs, lawn tennis to judo.
3. I can not work if music's playing. Too distracting. Either music or work. But art-making and music feel fine together.
4. I love to look at my watercolor paintbox. It makes me hungry for painting.
5. In 2011 I learned how to work in 3D Max and Photoshop. By myself. I still can not believe I managed.


And now small sketches from the "dacha" life. Unfinished and very quick, but still they are a diary of my summer days. Happy painting, friends!

Dad's Sleeping

Dad's sleeping

 Again, sketches from the countryside where my parents live in the summer.

Ma decorated apple tree with pensees in pots

Mr.Ceasar, Emperor of Romans

30x40cm

I  drew him in class.That fact explains that he is recognizable and his eyes and nose are of right size and at right place.
Looking at his features and his neck, when drawing, I felt that Mr. Caesar was very interesting man. In that sort of attractiveness, when you know that this man will ruin you and your life ("thrash the life out of my soul", they say in Russian..), yet you can not resist his power. Poor Ms. Cleopatra.

Next Saturday I will paint him in oil, at different angle.

Still Life with Cotton Plant

Next still life in graphite from my drawing class. 50x70cm (20"x28")

Landmark of the City

The Church of Christ the Savior is the largest in Moscow. In 1931 it was destroyed after the revolution of 1917. They constructed the open air pool (largest in Moscow) for proletariat instead of the church.
The building was reconstructed in 1994-1997.
My EDM#41 "Draw the landmark of the city".
More about the church in wiki (here).

Summer Dreams, Landscapes and Sketchcrawl

24x32cm, Watercolor and Neocolor II pastels

Short and grey winter days in Moscow burst with longing for color and as the result,  imagination provides very colorful subjects for painting. I combined watercolor and Neocolor water soluble pastels in the upper one. And found out that these pastels are specially good to mark the details on wet surface.

Ink and watercolor in sketchbook

The second one is based on the photo I took in Wetcanvas image library few years ago.

Watercolor in sketchbook

Quick sketch of Indian plains, based on the photo of a friend.

This Saturday I joined the Sketchcrawl group for the first time. The idea was to sketch all day long around the city, changing location and finding interesting details. I was going on for 2 hours and here are my results:

Ink, watercolor, sketchbook

The building on the other side of the road from Coffeemania cafe, where we settled down (I finished drawing and added color at home).

Table things at the table where I drank my coffee and sketched.

As I do not feel enough confident to draw people in the cafe, I focused on the toy of the boy who was with our group.













And to continue the tradition, I want to share the link to talented Japanese watercolorist who lives in California, visit him at "Watercolors by Osamu"

This is my version of his monochrome painting, I think the original is so good in tone and composition.

Holidays are Behind

Oil, 35x50cm

10 days of holidays are behind. It was a time when the city was felt to be covered  in big warm fluffy blanket. Empty streets, no traffic, laziness in the air. And I tried to use this occasion to draw and to paint.

Why 10 days? Orthodox church Christmas is on 7th January. And New Year (orthodox calendar) is on 14th January (here wiki calendar's explanation if you want the details). And if you are a dedicated "celebrator" you can start on 25th December and finish celebrating on 15th January..
So our government decided few years ago that Russia needs long holiday in January (some people say that government people set this law for their own winter comfort in the Alps skiing, but I do not believe).

It was good time. And good that it is over, time to wake up!

My upper still life is from the drawing class.  Though the drawing has a lot of mistakes, I like the overall warm impression.

A5, Ink and watercolor in sketchbook

 The EDM drawing list is always great help if you search for drawing ideas. It inspired me to draw "something china". It is china pot and the chick on chicken's back hides the water hole.
The date stamp is my latest purchase.  I saw it in one of the "Urban Sketchers" blog and decided I need the same for my sketchbook.

A5, Ink and watercolor in sketchbook

 

This one was "Draw your toothbrush" in EDM. I spread the idea to wider view of the bathroom interior.

30x40cm, watercolour

I kept the photo of this vase on the windowsill for so long that I can not remember the author exactly. It was one of Jen's photos in Rookiepainter challenge in 2009, I think.


This painting was very well corresponding to the stillness and calmness of January holiday time .

This one is the result of the experiment, which I found in the drawing manual:
Take a photo, turn it upside down and draw lines and shapes, not legs, arms and head. That idea really worked! I did this sketch in upside down position in 30 minutes with almost no corrections. Time to switch off the thinking process and draw what one sees!

A4, watercolor and Neocolor sticks

And apples. I was inspired by apples' photo in this Russian artist's blog.
I wanted to practice watercolor's transparency and color combinations. Instead sketch was started in watercolor and finished in watercolor Neocolor sticks of my favorite bold colors' combination.



And, as usual in this blog's latest posts, I want to share my latest discovery:
Oona and her watercolor wonders.