koukla carolyn

I seem to be going into some sort of Victorian phase with all these pen and ink roses. The reason why I draw them is because they are an easy target. My mother has this silk flower arrangement on the coffee table in the living room where I watch tv. They are just there, so I draw them.

Tomorrow is my first day of school. Since the first day of the semester entails almost no work, I plan to do a lot of sketching between classes. I hope I have some nice stuff to show you tomorrow.

I was inspired by the collection theme and decided to get some practice with watercolor at the same time. I searched all over the house for pieces of blue glass that would make nice subjects and I am fairly happy with the results. I painted this on a watercolor greeting card—someone is going to get a pretty picture in the mail.

Oh, and I just figured out how to approve my comments! Thank you everyone who left me one.

This sketch is for Everyday Matters challenge #31: collections. My old art teacher advised me to keep “collections” of features to help me with my portraiture skills. For example, she told me to draw different kinds of eyes, noses, ears, or lips on a page to study different shapes and lighting. I have been intrigued with lips lately. The set of lips on the bottom of the page is my own. These are some other examples of lips I have drawn:

I sketched this silk rose before bed last night using a 005 micron pen. I tried drawing it a few other times using straight lines but I finally settled on this more “flowy” version. If I did it again I would use a thicker pen and use less lines.