EVEN MORE DRAWINGS! JOIN IN THE FUN!

These charming drawings were done by Lyn Lynch. Lyn tells me she is self taught. Wow, quite impressive. I noticed a slight problem with the features, so I sent Lyn a message with a suggestion for correction. I decided I could share this tip with all of you, as well. It is part of what I teach in my portrait workshops. Often we know something is wrong but we either can't figure out what or we don't know how to fix it.

"There is an imaginary center line that cuts the human head, when looking straight on, into two equal halves. That line is the axis and actually would go down through the skull from the top of the head and come out under the jaw. Now, each of the features ie. eyebrows, eyes, nostrils, lip, ears...they have imaginary horizontal lines that cross over the center vertical. The central axis is the first thing you need to establish. This creates the angle of the head. It will not always be totally vertical, in fact most often is at one angle or another. Once you establish this angle, then you need to establish the lines for each of the features. NO MATTER WHAT ANGLE THE CENTRAL AXIS IS AT, THE FEATURES MUST BE AT A PERFECT 90 DEGREE RIGHT ANGLE TO THE CENTRAL AXIS AT THE JUNCTION WHERE THE LINES CROSS. You can take a piece of tracing paper and lay it on top of your drawings and then take a ruler (a plastic triangle with a right angle works great) and check your placement."

Last night "Art Laisons" headed up by Gail Sjoman, my art representative (and very good friend) had a reception at the latest installation of her artists in a beautiful office park. It was a great turnout and I was happy to see so many friends come out for the celebration.

At the workshop on Wednesday, one of the participants told me about another exciting pen...it is the Vis-a-vis wet pen used for overhead projector projects. This black pen bleeds out brown and pale orange! She showed me a sketch and It was terrific. Naturally, I was on a quest to find this pen. I dragged around to four stores before I found it. It was at the Office Supply store. The other thing I was on a mission to find was a small portable photo printer. I am going to take it with me tomorrow on our trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming where we will be seeing the beautiful scenery of the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Park. I will have lots of time to paint at night, so thought it would be great to have a few new photos to work from. I will be doing a little bit of plein aire but it will be just small fast studies or sketches.

Check out the latest feature of my blog. It is the "Blog List". It is something new that lists the blogs in order of the latest posts and gives you a little preview of the posting. This way you don't have to keep checking to see if there is anything new on your other favorite blogs that are linked to mine.