Dinosaur and Sake Set

tyrannosaur sketch and sake set

in blue Graphitint pencils dry

I got in some sketching this morning and finished what I meant to do with the opposite page - sketch a reconstruction from that view of the skull. Not 100% satisfied with it though I do like how the arm and mouth came out. Something about the head angle made it hard to do the face.

I meant to wash the watersoluble pencils but didn't, particularly because I liked the way the pottery looked without a wash.

The sake carafe and cups are from an ebook I bought on sale, "Urban Sketching" by Marc Taro Holmes. I enjoyed his video on Urban Sketching: Birds and snapped up this ebook today on a Black Friday sale. The only sale item I bought this year, money's tight. It's a good ebook, fascinating and right on topic for all the sketching I've been doing in 2015. 

Tyrannosaur and Hollyhock, Part 2

Tyrannosaur and Hollyhock Page

photo references by Joanne_N - pen and watercolor on large Moleskine

Yay, finished the good page. I wasn't sure how I'd handle the background, but a mistake provided the answer. I got a terrible blotch of the grayed blue I used for the plaster bits in the skull falling right at the tip of the bottom jaw. Splashed out onto the brown too and so I spread it over the shadows strengthening them, touched that color in over the brown anywhere I saw shadows. 

I first tried to lift it out but it was stubborn. So I used the blue again, with a little violet and a little brown to gray it, and started working around the head blending it in. That worked! I can see it when I really look but it blends in optically as just one more light-dark variation in the misty background. Looks deliberate. Turned out that was the best color and value to set off the brown skeleton.

The photo reference had a much darker background but I like the blue mistiness better for a painting. The brighter colors of the hollyhock worked nicely to set it off. I'm happy with this page. Still thinking of sketching a reconstruction of the tyrannosaur on the facing page, maybe with a magnolia because those are very ancient, primitive flowers.

Velociraptor in Pen and Watercolor

Velociraptor

7" square, pen and watercolor

Isn't he gaudy! Of course I had to create a colorful male Velociraptor, shaking his mane and showing off his bright teeth and hot red-pink wattle! I loved the new dinosaur revelations at every round, warm-blooded, feathered theropods fascinated me and made posing them a lot easier. 

The photo reference for the Emu looked so much like the most recent reconstructions of little feathered raptors that I went ahead and used it again to do my Velociraptor. They're little, about the size of a turkey, but make up for it with the switchblade claw and all those sharp teeth. Dinosaurs don't need to be gigantic to be cool!

And being sixty, no reason not to still get into them - now that I can finally draw and paint well enough to do them justice!