Let’s Draw CANDY!
Plus a peek in my sketchbook & what I've been up to 👀
THURSDAY, AUGUST 8 @ 7:00PM ET on YouTube & Twitch
CANDY! CANDY CANDY!
I think this is our second time drawing candy at ART HANG PARTY! but when I pulled it out of our pot o’ themes everyone was really excited and I couldn’t disagree!
I asked people on discord to let me know their favourite candy, and we’ve got some fun ones to draw!
🥁 ANNNNDDDDD!!!! 🥁
I’m cohosting a live drawing session with Charlotte Hamilton!
✹ SATURDAY AUGUST 10 at 3:00PM - 5:00PM on ZOOM
✹ RSVP: https://lu.ma/3o972gzl
We will chat about Toronto and guide you through images which we will give you timed limitations. Keeping it fun, bring whatever materials you would like to experiment with.
So exciting!
✏️🤗💖✨
Next ART HANG PARTY! will be Thursday, August 15 at 7pm et on YouTube & Twitch
Theme: TBD!
Do you have an idea for a future ART HANG PARTY! theme?
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FRIDAY JULY 26
We’re going to have a little bit of a catch-up from the end of last week as I was away for the weekend on our annual family camping weekend!
I set off early on Friday morning to take the train to meet up with my sister and catch a ride with her and her husband to Kincardine, Ontario, to meet up with (most of) the rest of our family.
I did a did a few sketches in my “people from life” sketchbook along the way
And a few sketches on the drive
I had grand plans of filling both sides of a little accordion sketchbook over the weekend. One side would be a 360° view of our campsite (aka the farm of a family friend) and the other would be of people at the beach. (thanks to Deb for that idea!)
This is the only landscape I got done, so I’ll finish the rest from photos
My niece Autumn joined in the plein air time with a painting of her own!
SATURDAY JULY 27
After walking around the main street in Kincardine we set up on the beach and I’m happy to report I actually completed the full side!
I managed to draw all my family that were there along with a few random people around us - check out the video to see them all!
Autumn did another plein air painting!
SUNDAY JULY 28
I didn’t draw anything on Sunday as it was mostly spent packing up, taking another quick trip to the beach, then making the lonnnnnnng journey home.
Here’s a short video recap of the weekend!
I have to also catch up on my self portraits from the weekend…
MONDAY JULY 29
As I watching Sandi Hester’s latest YouTube video over lunch I was compelled to get out my sketchbook about half way through watching her paint flowers and did a quick study of her paintings as she was painting. The left side is based on her composition and the right is from the flowers as she was holding them in her hand while working on her second piece.
I used a graphite crayon I picked up at the little art store / coffee shop on the weekend (a dream retail scenario if you ask me!). I didn’t test this crayon out before I bought it but looked chunky and bold and I have to say I’m not disappointed. I added a fluoro pink solid marker background because it needed a little something.
After dinner I worked on the landscape side of the accordion sketchbook from photos I took of the campsite / farm fields. I again had grand plans of finishing it all but only got these two, what shall we call them, vignettes(?) done.
Still need to catch up on my self portraits!
TUESDAY JULY 30
Self portrait binge!
When I was at my sisters on Sunday I spotted a “World Bird Book” sitting on her bookshelf. I’ve been looking for something like this to use a reference for a long time! Even though it was huge and would add considerable weight to my backpack for my long bus ride home I asked if I could borrow it. She didn’t even know she had it 😂
So, while dinner was in the oven I got out my paint sticks and new graphite crayon and had a quick play! I put the colour in first and then the graphite and I had some acrylic paint on these pages from when I was making my Simon lino print.
After dinner I was in the mood to draw some people, so I opened up pinterest and gathered a bunch of people playing instruments. I used my new-to-me woody pencils!
I’m really enjoying the way my people are coming out lately. Must do something for my portfolio with them.
Today’s self portrait
WEDNESDAY JULY 31
There was talk about people’s favourite fountain pens over on the AHP discord this morning, so while watching Charlotte Hamilton’s morning livestream on YT and with a fresh cup of coffee, I decided to open my sketchbook and draw my fountain pens, using the pens themselves.
When I was out for our sweaty lunch walk (it’s been so hot the last few days) I picked a few flowers from the public garden to draw in my sketchbook, thinking back to flower spread I made based on Sandi’s video the other day.
I held the flowers in my hand and drew them a few times.
UPDATE: I swear I added these in but they were missing from this post!
Here are some people I drew with ART HANG PARTY! friends over on the AHP discord
Today’s self portrait
THURSDAY AUGUST 1
I was invited to join Charlotte Hamilton’s patreon session this morning, drawing Merrill’s Pokifest photos! It was really nice to draw and chat with her community. I have no idea who any of these character are but they were fun to draw!
And then it was BUTTERFLY week at ART HANG PARTY!
I was undecided on what materials I wanted to use today, but I had the thought that it might be fun to the Mel Chadwick/mushroom session way of flooding the page with colour and using negative space to draw the butterflies in.
We started with 1-minute blind contour drawings of Kamisaka Sekka's Cho senshu (One Thousand Butterflies), Japanese woodcuts from 1908
My original plan for timing was to start fast and then increase the timer as we went, so we started with 2 minutes, then upped it to 5 but stopped there because that was plenty to capture each reference.
Or too much time in my case, so I grabbed my little sketchbook, graphite crayon and pink solid paint marker and split my time between the big piece and these little ones, which I much prefer!
Today’s self portrait
FRIDAY AUGUST 2
I finished the accordion sketchbook!
It was impossible to take a photo of the whole thing, so I used the photoshop ‘photo merge’ feature to stitch it all together.
Today’s self portrait
SATURDAY AUGUST 3
This morning was our monthly ART HANG PARTY! pop-up and our theme was underwater.
We started with some quick 1-minute warm-ups:
Then cranked the timer up to 20 minutes!
I woke up thinking I’d use my Kuretake Gansai Tambi paints with coloured pencils and Neocolor IIs, so that’s what I did.
I struggled so much with the first one, especially the water, but the turtle felt a lot better.
A few people in the chat were using oil pastels and that sounded a lot more fun than struggling through the last two references I made the switch and am so glad I did.
I much more enjoyed doing these two!
Today’s self portrait
SUNDAY AUGUST 4
A few weeks ago I picked up two sketchbooks from Muji. Not because I needed more sketchbooks but because they looked fun.
Since I brought them home, when I’ve wanted to do something mindlessly creative, I’ve been swiping acrylic paint on the pages with an old store card. The paint dries almost immediately and it looks so cool. My plan is to fill the whole sketchbook with random bits of colour like this.
I didn’t know what I actually wanted to use the sketchbook for. Maybe it would become my daily go-to when my current Talens art creations is finished. Maybe it would just sit on the shelf filled with random bits of colour.
But this morning while watching a David Hockney sketchbook flip-through I was inspired to grab it and draw my coffee cup, and so a purpose was found!
Meet my “objects and other thin(g)s and whatnot” sketchbook!
I’ve been feeling quite housebound this week, with watching our houseguest Benji and all that Ray suggested I take myself out for a date to the art store. How could I say no to that!
Since my last trip there I’ve been thinking of the Turner Acryl Gouache sets they had so that was top of my list. I also got a tube of Reflex Red watercolour from Turners, which I’m quite disappointed to find isn’t actually fluorescent like the name/tag suggested, a broken pan pastel in yellow ochre and the infamous Fabre-Castel 14B pencil.
And! I ordered a little set of Gansai Tambi granulating colours that arrived today! How fun are they!
I filmed a little haul and swatching video that will come in the next few days, if you’re into that kind of thing ;)
I then had a play with the granulating colours on a discord hang with Sam Ashley Art and Xan Blackburn, just chatting away while painting and scribbling jellyfish.
Today’s self portrait
A short little video of my annual family camping weekend in Kincardine, Ontario
🤗💖✨
Ok, that’s it for me!
See you Thursday at ART HANG PARTY!
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The concertina sketchbook turned out so beautiful Melissa 😍 do you take pictures of yourself in different positions for the self portraits? I'm struggling with mine but I will persevere 😁🙈
Well done for finishing the concertina!! 👏🏻✨✨✨ Your self-portraits are very resembling Melissa.