Bunny of Shame

Yesterday I took a step back from posting. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to. It was just that I pushed myself so hard in an attempt to push through this awkward phase I’ve been having that my artwork suffered as a consequence. And I don’t mean a little bit. The portrait that I drew was so stiff and awkward that I didn’t even recognize it as my work. Every aspect of it was just…off. So I took a break from portraits again today and decided to give you something a bit different.

Ladies and Gentlemen…Boys and Girls… I give you the Bunny of Shame! Duhn-Duhn-Duhn!

I have this obsession with chocolate bunnies. Every year around Easter these little beauties grace the shelves of our local shops and I always get really giddy about it. I always plan to buy one for myself so that I can bite off its head Barbarian-style right after Easter dinner. But for three years in a row I’ve missed out on these little treats. I try to wait until a few days before Easter to buy one so that I don’t eat it before the holiday and then something always keeps me from buying one. I get sick the week of Easter or I have to run out of town; my neighbor’s dog starts trying to start the zombie apocalypse…again! Something always thwarts me. So last Easter I got wise and bought myself a bunny as soon as they hit the shelves. In order to keep me from eating it, I wrapped it securely and placed it lovingly in the back of my refrigerator so that I could later devour it while watching Peter Rabbit. Except, I forgot about my bunny. It’s been hanging out way it the back of my fridge behind my not-so-favorite blackberry jam and the pickle jars for several months now. Oops. Oh well, maybe I’ll get another one next Easter…and remember to eat it. For now I’ll just hang my head low and weep over my Bunny of Shame.

Duck Lips and An Awkward Phase

Hello everyone. I hope that you had a good weekend and if you didn’t, I hope that this week goes a lot better. Today I’ve tried my hand at another portrait. I used a picture by a photographer named Eli DeFaria as a reference. I’m sorry but they didn’t give the model’s name so I unfortunately don’t have that for you.

I chose the image because the model was posing with “duck lips” in a semi-subtle way. I wanted to practice this unusual lip position in my drawing. It’s not too bad I think for a first attempt but there are some things I would do differently in the future. I feel my drawings are going through an awkward phase though. For some reason, while I’m laying out the groundwork at the beginning of my drawing things look fine and I’m happy with the drawing while I’m working on it. But the moment I finish it all I see are things that need correcting (in my opinion). This usually happens every once in a while, that’s just the nature of making art. Not every piece is going to be your favorite. But lately I feel like my images are going wonky. So even though I am not happy with the way things turned out with this drawing, I’m posting it anyway. There’s nothing to do but to keep practicing and learning. Hopefully my awkward phase will end soon.

Dear Andy

Andy is someone that you probably will see a lot of here at The Graphite Cupcake. You may have even spotted him already in my October 9, 2019 post making a very angry face. On days that I like to practice drawing portraits at the cafe or in the wee hours of the night when I can’t seem to get to sleep I can always count on Andy being a willing model. But he’s not an actual person. Andy is actually a handful of little resin faces all sculpted into different expressions that I keep in my pencil case.
My Dear Friend Andy is not perfect. Not by a long shot. But he is always there in a pinch whenever I need him.

Figure Study Day

I don’t have too much to say today. Shocker, I know. Today’s drawing is another figure study. It’s unfinished but I hope you like it just the same. :)

Meh.

Do you ever have one of those days where you try to get things done but you just feel…meh. That irritating flat feeling of being underwhelmed with everything. You just want to shrug your shoulders and say “..meh.” to everything. Well, this portrait was made while I was feeling very much “…meh”. The portrait didn’t come out exactly the way I had in my mind but I kind of like it. I don’t know. What do you think? I think I will keep it and maybe try drawing it again at a later date just to compare the two. If you make a piece of artwork that you are unsure about or are just plain unhappy with I encourage you not to erase it or to throw it out. Keep it so that later on you can see where you have improved in your skills. Often we are unhappy with our artwork because we know what level we would like to be at and we feel that what our hands have made is of lower quality than what we have in our heads. But we have to keep working at it. The more we practice, the more we improve. Artwork an act of constantly evolving and changing the way you do things. The artwork that you produce today is a stepping stone for the artwork that you will produce tomorrow.

Back In The Saddle Again

Back to figure studies and portraits! This is a pencil drawing done in my favorite sketchbook. It’s heavy like a brick to carry around with me. It’s also cheap and the cover is falling apart but I’m able to build up the graphite quite a lot so it works for me.

The Truth About Murphy's Law and Chimney Racoons

WARNING: LONG POST AHEAD!

If you’ve been following along on this artful journey then you probably noticed that we’ve been off to a rough start. I made the tiny mistake of starting this blog while starting a new art challenge…while traveling out of state to help clean out a house that requires a lot of time and manual labor. You may even say that I bit off WAY more than I could chew. Maybe. It’s possible.

By Day 3 of Inktober, I was already feeling flustered and from there it kinda all just went downhill.
Enter Murphy’s Law: My twelve day trip to Boston turned into a month-long fiasco. One thing after another just went wrong. A major storm blew threw the area for a couple of days making it impossible to fix up the house so we extended our trip a little to compensate for lost work days. There was a whole week of trouble with the bank so then our trip was extended a little more. Then our car decided it didn’t like the idea of driving back to New York so it had a mechanical melt down. So then our trip was extended even further. We got the car fixed and that’s when my computer decided it too would create an act of mechanical mutiny and take away my online connection privileges. Perfect.

After all of this, I decide that I will just upload everything when I get home because surely, we will be going back in a day or two. Right?

At this point my partner in crime (PIC for short) and I decided “We’re definitely leaving in the morning! So let’s get some more work done at the house before packing tonight.” So while shuffling boxes around the living room that night I hear a strange chirping and cooing sound. I can’t really describe it but it was kind of creepy and I prayed that it was just an animal outside the window that sounded like it was inside of the house. Twenty minutes later, I hear what sounds like a cat sneezing in the fireplace to my left. Now, I could lie to you and say that I nonchalantly challenged the mystery fireplace goblin to a duel using the firepoker as a sword but you and I already know that what I really did was yell my head off, grab my purse and my PIC and run for the door. Yeah, I have no shame. So after a lot of Google searches I found that the most likely suspect was a racoon. Further searches took me down the horror train of things they can inflict on your house if inside. Things I will never be able to unsee. Because it was late at night, there was nothing we could do until morning…which meant extending our trip yet again.

When morning comes, we find that no one can come out until the following day but thankfully the wildlife expert says that the racoon was most likely in the chimney or on the roof at the opening of it. Because of the way chimneys are built, the sounds that the animal made were amplified to sound like it was inside of the fireplace itself. The bad news is, once he used humane methods to deter the animal from taking up long term residence in the chimney we would have to listen out for more sounds for a few more days to make sure it worked. So our trip was extended yet again.

The good news is that there were no more sounds. The bad thing is that something else in the house decided to break. But sometimes you have to know when to quit. So we did. We’re back home now and after much needed time to recuperate I’m settling back into a daily drawing routine.

The Simpler, The Better?

Ok, if you’re just tuning in, I’ve been participating in this year’s Inktober Challenge where you set out to make 31 ink drawings in as many days for the month of October. And I think I may both love and very much hate this experience. I love it because it forces me not to get too caught up in the details of a drawing until it’s absolutely perfect. That’s a bad habit that needs to stop when I am sketching as it takes the spontaneity and fun out of the experience. With that being said, being pushed to complete a drawing and post it daily without rest is a major feat since I am unfamiliar with using ink and once a mark is made, it’s there forever. This forces me to start the drawing from scratch as I like to ink my original pencil outline. It’s not ideal to learn this on the fly while traveling either. So maybe I need to stop going for thevhighly detailed drawings that I prefer, and opt for sketches that are simpler to complete? If I mess up the drawing I can easily do it again. If I get it done the first time around I can go back to watching Halloween themed movies on TV while eating junk food when I should be working.

Lieutenant Dan, I Brought You Some Ice Cream!

Today I drew an pastel colored ice cream cone squishy toy that I found in the kids’ section at a store. I mainly bought it because I thought that it would be fun to draw once and then gift to a kid that I know afterwards. But the colors are so pretty and it’s kind of fun to squish…Is it wrong for a “grown-up” to keep it? You know, purely for artistic studying of form and all that. NOT because it would be fun to smack an older sibling over the head with it when they fall asleep on the couch and record their reaction on my phone. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.

A Blast From the Past

While doing a bit of cleaning I came across an old photo of my cousin Al when he was a baby. My Aunt and Uncle were a couple of photography enthusiasts back in the day so there are tons of amazing photographs tucked away in boxes all over the house. When I saw the photo of my cousin making a cute duck face while contemplating…well, whatever it is that babies contemplate…I just had to record it in my sketchbook.

Hmm…you gotta wonder what he’s thinking about though. Maybe blue Play-Dough vs. red? Why Ernie on Sesame Street is obsessed with a rubber duck? Or maybe he’s thinking about quantum particles and their exact role in the creation and evolution of the universe…Yeah, It’s probably that last one.

Overwhelmed But Not Out of the Game...

So the plan was to post everyday for Inktober. However I didn’t take into account the learning curve of working with ink…or using word prompts. That topped with traveling out of town and getting a head cold has put a serious wrench in my Inktober dreams. Its been a tedious game of catch-up so I’ve decided to streamline my approach. First, I’m going to skip the whole word prompt thing. I take much too long debating what I can draw that fits in with the word of the day. This killed the fun for me and so now I’m just going to draw what I feel like drawing on that particular day. Secondly, I needed to minimize my tools. Too many drawings had to be redrawn because I flubbed up the inking technique. This put me further behind on my drawings. I need to use an inking tool that is easy to carry in my bag so that I can draw whenever I have free time. Also, I need one that doesn’t make me worry about technique while laying down lines.
For now, that tool is my trusty Pentel R.S.V.P. ballpoint pen (fine tip). I love this thing so much that I don’t even mind the random ink blobs it leaves on my drawings if I don’t wipe the point often. Those blobs are character marks.

When I’m able to settle down back at home then I’ll probably experiment with other techniques but for now I like hatching with ballpoint pen.

Above are the drawings done for October 04-07. Most were completed the day after I should have done them but at least I did it. I am still one day behind and I may try to catch-up and I may decide to let it go. We shall see.

Thank Goodness It's Over!

It’s midnight and I’m finally done with Inktober Day 3. This is the second time I’ve done this drawing as I seriously butchered the first one. No pun intended. In the original drawing, I used a brush pen and it went horribly wrong. Like if Freddie Kruger and Chucky had a love child and my drawing was a realistic portrait of said love child kind of wrong. The prompt for today was Bait so I decided to do a portrait of Norman Bates from Alfred Hitchock’s 1960 film “Psycho”.
The character was played by Anthony Perkins. For some reason, after trying to get his likeness down on paper for the last few hours I think I’m thoroughly obsessed with this man’s features. You know, from an artistic standpoint. Not in the “Ooh, that creepy guy from that old creepy movie is kind of hot” standpoint.

Better Late Than Never: Inktober Delays

OK, it is Day 3 of the Inktober Challenge and I already fell behind. I had a long car ride to Boston, MA yesterday so although I started my drawing in the car while at a rest stop I kinda fell asleep after unpacking the car when we got here. So I finished it this morning and promptly started Day 3’s drawing…which went down-hill. It turned into a hot mess. So I’m posting my Day 2 work now and hopefully before bed will get the other online as well. What did I sign myself up for?! This is nuts!

Day one of Inktober!!!

Day One of Inktober is finally here! I’m both excited and a little sick to my stomach about it. Woohoo! Today was the first time that I’ve ever drawn in ink…with the exception of that ugly Toucan I had to draw in high school art class with nothing but a series of tiny dots made with the world’s tiniest dip pen. That was not fun. Not at all. It was kind of terrible.

Along with this being my first ink drawing, it was also the first time that I’ve created a fantasy character instead of a realistic portrait. It was a lot of fun to draw and I hope you like it.

An Adventure in Figure Studies

For a while now, I’ve been trying to ease my way from studying just the human face and portraiture to also studying the human form. I know its not the “adult” thing to say but I’ll say it anyway. It’s pretty darned difficult to concentrate on the various shapes that make up the human figure when the naked model standing before you makes you want to keep your eyes glued firmly to the ceiling. What happens when after the drawing session is over and the model starts a friendly conversation with you? Even though you’re looking him square in the eye all you can think about is the weird birthmark on his left buttock. And how you don’t know this guy’s name but you know that he has a weird birthmark on his left buttock. I tell you what you do. Plaster a rigid smile on your face that probably looks more like the face you made when you stumped your toe on the kitchen table leg, nod your head politely over and over like a weirdo and side-step your way slowly away from him until you can turn and run for the door. It’s just plain awkward!

Hell, even the photo version of artistically posed nude models makes me blush…I’m old fashioned that way. It just seems like way too much information when you don’t even know the person. I know I need to get over it. So that means I’ll have to concentrate on slowly trying to draw the whole person. Even below the sternum. Oy vey!

The drawing above is my first attempt at drawing someone below the neck. Which doesn’t sound like much but it was a milestone for me. Sorry for the darkness of the photo, by the way. The first few images may be like this until I can get my camera’s exposure to cooperate. Which would mean less fiddling in my photo editing software later on.

On a happy note, tomorrow starts the first day of Inktober. Which I’ve been wanting to participate in for the last 2 years but never did. This also means I get to take a break from figure studies even though I’ve only just begun it. Is it a cop out? Yes. Yes it is. This year, I’ll be working from the Inktober prompts as much as possible but I probably will add portraits or figures into the mix. As long as it doesn’t make me want to pull my hair out. Wish me luck! …or don’t…really it’s up to you.