Screaming Blandness

Abandoned? Almost.

2011-03-20T12:17:00.003+01:00

It seems I have abandoned this blog. Given more than a year without a single post it seems fairly obvious. In all honesty I have not had the time nor the motivation to do a lot of drawing. Which is somewhat surprising given how much I love to do it. But as is so often the case, work is consuming me to a point where I don't have the time nor the relaxed attitude I need to produce any decent work.

I am trying to get back on the train again by drawing for our sketchbook sharing blog which has nearly come to a halt due to my involuntary procrastination. Therefore I'm not closing this blog completely.

All of this does not mean however that I have completely abandoned any creative endeavors. I have quite taken to photography over the last year and a half. If you're interested you can visit my personal website at http://bart.kevelham.com or my flickr stream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/bkevelham/. All in all photography gets me of my computer-bound butt and out for some fresh air, while at the same time producing an acceptable image is a matter of mere minutes and not hours. A good alternative in my opinion.

I hope to be back one day, but until then feel free to drop by at the other sites mentioned above. :)

Moleskine update

2009-11-29T21:13:00.003+01:00

Yes, I realize it has been three months since my last post here and even longer since the last decent drawing. But I have been drawing in the mean time. Just not something I could post over here. But now it is finally online. Go check it out at http://wirelessmate.blogspot.com/

Dilemmas...

2009-08-17T17:42:00.003+02:00

:) Time to draw again.

A new Moleskine Exchange

2009-07-23T21:47:00.005+02:00

Okay, okay, I'm cheating a little bit. No new drawing from me. For some reason this thing called a PhD keeps getting in the way (even forgot about the last sketchcrawl...stupid). But I'm working on something. Don't worry. So what is this post about?

I think I blogged about this some centuries ago. :) Together with my dear friend Silvina we had the idea to share a Moleskine and send it back and forth to fill it together. Of course we considered the possibility of our divorce at some point, during which we would have to battle in court who gets to keep the Moleskine, but we decided to take the risk and go ahead.

Today I received a package in my mail with the Moleskine and Sil's first drawing. We set up a shared blog at Wireless Mate (bonus points for those of you who get the pun) so go and check out the first post. You can leave your comments after the beep...

"Better"

2009-05-30T23:45:00.006+02:00

I'm calling this one done. If I mess with it more I will ruin it. I like the overall feel, although there are tons of things that are incorrect, could be pushed more or could be worked out better. But if I compare it to the Virginia Woolf sketch, I do feel this is better.

On to the next one I guess. Let me know what you guys think.

A second pass

2009-05-27T22:47:00.005+02:00

Football on TV tonight, so a great time to draw. Yes, I do realize that it's a strange connection to make, but I need some distraction when watching a match. Especially if the team I support at the night does not win. Ah well, at least I made some decent progress on my drawing.

A pretty decent update if I may say so myself. The balance is a bit better and the values are closer to the reference. I did just discover that something is off though. Either the nose is too short or the mouth is too small. Don't know what happened there. I might have to do a nose-ectomy with my trusty eraser. But I'll look at it another day. I did start blocking in the hair a bit as well, but it still scares me. After this I want to shift my focus a bit more. Try some full bodies and to draw more from shading and shapes than from line. Who knows, I might even try color. ;)

In progress on a day off...

2009-05-21T22:30:00.004+02:00

It's great to have a day off. Finally a chance to get away from my computer and all the carefully placed bugs in my code, to sharpen my pencils and draw a bit. I actually started this one last weekend, but as so often on a day off my head thought, "why not give him a headache and make him stay in bed all day". Given that I had run out of my private stash of real Saridon I just got some measurements and planes in before I had to give up.

I continued today (surprisingly headache free :) ) and started to lay out the major shapes and shadows. There is still a load of work to do and some parts very important to this image (eye lashes for example) are still missing. But I'm pretty happy so far.

The likeness is not great yet, but that will come. (Sorry for the bad picture. It's taken with a camera since I have no scanner Edit: May 23rd. Updated the image with a better one.) Some relative values are wrong, but that's easy enough to correct. I have to use many more layers anyway. There's one part that I'm dreading though; the hair. There's a lot of it and I'm not yet sure how to tackle it. But let's see. Maybe I'll abstract away from it somehow.

To answer some questions I've received: I use one pencil. A black sanford col-erase. (note to self: buy some more!!) I don't exactly know what kind of paper I'm using. It's a simple A4-size Canson sketchbook. The paper is not super smooth, but not rough either.

I received a message from Sil saying that our Moleskine is on it's way to me. Yes, the one I blogged about in June of last year. (We're very fast :) ) Can't wait to receive it. I'm very curious to see what she has drawn and I'm trying to come up with something I can add. I have a couple of ideas, but I won't give it away yet.
Hmm, this turned out to be a pretty long post for a work in progress. I'll stop my rambling here and go sip some mate. A good day. :)

I'm everywhere and I'm watching you.

2008-07-02T17:55:00.003+02:00

For those of you following this blog (yes, I know you are reading this. I'm tracking you. Ooh, that's a nice shirt you're wearing...) you can now add my blog on facebook as well. Just add the Blog Networks application and go to http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blogpage.php?blogid=6945
My god, I'm omni-present. It's scary

When do you stop?

2008-06-29T23:39:00.002+02:00

So here it is again. My tiny Virginia Woolf sketch. Of course there was football on tv, so I started drawing again. I felt there was something wrong in my previous sketch, so I did some measuring and noticed that I was way off in some point. So most of the bottom half of the page has been erased and redrawn. As well as the hair. So is it done now? I guess so. I won't work on it anymore anyway. The likeness is not great and I noticed that my sense of structure, angles and volumes is way off. So I need to practice. I mean, I can't deface our shared sketchbook with my amateur drawings when you have the beautiful paintings of Sil in there. She would kill me. ;)

Let the torture commence

2008-06-27T23:27:00.004+02:00

Okay, so this is a picture of a moleskine. And I didn't even take it. So what on earth is this doing here? Well, since a long time my dear friend Silvina and I had the brilliant idea to share a sketchbook. For some reason it never happened, but then I decided to send this moleskine to her as a gift for her (insert young age here)th birthday. So here we go. She will start with a painting/drawing using a certain theme and I will try to respond to that in a next painting. By sending it back and forth we hope to fill it. There is just one problem. We will blog about each other's work. So now I will have to wait until I receive the sketchbook. People who know me know that patience is not my strong point......

Watching football with the big bad Woolf

2008-06-08T20:03:00.003+02:00

These European Football Championships are great. I'm watching matches, but because I can't just do one thing at a time, I'm sketching a bit at the same time. Yesterday that resulted in the terrible shoe, but today I sketched a bit of Virginia Woolf. Long time ago since I did a decent portrait. I already see some mistakes, but I might finish it anyway. Although I think I might be able to focus on one single thing during Germany vs. Poland. Go Don Leo!! ;)

Man, what a horrible smell

2008-06-07T22:37:00.003+02:00

Decided to draw my shoe as one of the items on the inspiration list. I HATE the result. But I decided to post it anyway, cause I kind of like to track my progress. So let's see if I improve in the future. :)

Blub

2008-05-03T20:55:00.003+02:00

I wanted to try something different, so I decided to "stipple" a fish. Not totally satisfied (although it looks better IRL than on this photo), but it's a fun little thing and a first page of my nature-sketchbook.

Oldies, but goodies...

2008-03-18T10:14:00.004+01:00

I should not really be posting these here since they are too old, but I still like them. And since this will be my place to "publish" my drawings, I will put these up here as well.

That little voice...

2008-03-17T22:43:00.003+01:00

Little concept sketch

2008-03-08T00:17:00.003+01:00