Pelicans – graphite and watercolour pencils

I drew these pelicans from my own photo with graphite pencils then added a little colour with watercolour pencil. It is on Strathmore Aquarius which is hopeless for drawing.   It just doesn’t take the pigment. It is too soft. A sharpened pencil just digs a groove in it. I started with a 2b and moved up to a 6b but it didn’t make much difference.  I used a Tombow pen for the yellow in the eyes, as they are very prominent in the photo. Since I scanned it, I went back and did the black pupils in the eyes with a black pen.

You can’t get Strathmore Aquarius in Australia now. I got it for putting paint onto paper I then wanted to digital print on to, because its the one watercolour paper that doesn’t buckle. I bound a sheet of it into my book that I’ve been using for Kate’s watercolour pencil class – that was before I knew it wasn’t any good for drawing.

I have got a cold so I might go to bed now and watch Milk – I just loved that movie. I thought Sean Penn was just amazing. It completely changed my opinion of him. Even more his wonderful Oscar acceptance speech – the fact that he’s a man who appreciates elegance as a quality in another man (speaking of President Obama) makes me like him even more.

Bad drawings on GOOD paper

These are the drawings from Day One of my Campaign for Bad Drawing on Good Paper. Last Thursday I went with a friend on this harbour cruise – very different from the usual, as based on the industrial history of Sydney. With our new-ish interest in the demise of the working harbour, we thought it would be an ideal background. It was fantastic. Go, if you can, next time they have it.

I took my sketchbook with the GOOD paper (Stonehenge) and determined that although that ferry was chug-chug-chugging along, I would draw anyway. We had an ideal spot at the very stern, though people kept standing at the rail in front of me I could peer round them. So although these drawing began from the visual world, because of the momentum of the ferry, they were more than half from memory/imagination. I think that was very brave of me – straight with the pen onto Stonehenge.

So, today, I need to do some thumbnail drawings for another Cubist painting so that I can photograph it for a step-by-step project sheet for Matisse Derivan.  Will they go onto the Stonehenge or into the little spiral-bound cartridge paper one?  Who will join the Campaign for Bad Drawings on Good Paper?