Here’s a tip on using your computer to spot your drawing/painting flaws.  I was too lazy to grab my camera and take photos of two recent drawings that i did and used the webcam and Photo Booth instead.  What i got was the images reversed and what I saw was a whole bunch of flaws glaring back at me   This is another tool that I will use to spot mistakes in future.  I’ve put a the two examples side by side for you to see.  The first in each set is how you would view it and the second the mirror image.

Didn’t want to go around holding paintings in front of my laptop webcam and googled only to be reminded that flipping images is easy on a mac   Use Preview and use the Flip Horizontal command under the Tools Menu and off you go.  The two below are of a portrait that was started recently.

Not sure whether I saw the reference to the Odosketch website on twitter, fb or one of the blogs I visited a few days back.   I surf with at least 15 odd tabs open on my browser and some remain open for days.  Back to the subject, Odosketch is an online sketchpad.  I’ve tried a few in the past which were not as responsive.  With the bandwith available now I’m sure the earlier sites will be snappy too.  I had fun trying this one out.  Used the trackpad to sketch as the wacom wasn’t handy.

Pattern. Face after face. Follows a pattern, a formula.  Actually it is more like a guideline.  First to learn then to forget. I didn’t get that when I was learning it. How was I supposed to forget? The eyes to be centered from the top of the head to the chin and so on. I’m taking it into account but it’s not such a conscious decision anymore, more a part of the background conversation.   I remember talking to myself while positioning his ears though.

Today, thanks to Ed Terpening, I saw a video demo of  Peggi Kroll-Roberts showing her guidelines for these patterns. It refreshed my memory and I realised that I need to allow for more space below the nose upto the chin .

You can see more videos, read about this workshop and see Ed’s beautiful paintings on his blog.

Work in progress 12″ X 16″ Acrylic on Canvas

Looking forward to indulging myself for a while and going back to experimenting and learning.   I now have a fairly large image bank of photos taken by friends and me.

When I saw the ref for this it brought to mind the image that you see above and must’ve seen before on posters etc..  I too feel sorry for the underdog.  Hope I start doing something about it too and soon.

This is where I’m at so far and wondering how to proceed.  Spent the last few days just looking at it.

In the meantime, the journaling is continuing and I did my first doodle after a long long time. Used the newspaper so that I wouldn’t stress about how it would end up looking and I’ve uploaded it coz that is what this blog is meant for. I’m reading a book too after a long long time. The ref for the doodle is from the book cover.

Looking forward to some changes from my current all day online existence.

I’m on week three, day two of the twelve week journaling programme from Julia Cameron’s book, “The Artists Way“.   All kinds of thoughts and ideas are bubbling into my head and spilling over into the notebooks filled with my out of practice, illegible handwriting.  I’m not so sure I’ll be able to decipher them at the end!

Billy Joel’s song Honesty is for the thoughts currently milling about in my head.   I was thinking about honesty as related to what i put on my blog about my work.  Would love to get your opinion and if you dont agree with the two options I’ve given leave me your suggestion under “others” or as a comment.

Doing this exercise for the second time having gained immensely from it the last time – inspite of not following instructions.  This time I’m trying to do it right.  I have to thank my friend, Rajika for introducing me to the book in 2005 and to Julia Cameron for the incredible advice.  Thank you!   And if you havent tried it it’s an exercise well worth going through.  Take the time to do it.  You wont regret it.