Sue Pownall: Artist & illustrator
  • Home
  • SHOP
  • Gardens
  • On land & sea
  • Buildings
  • Swan Project
  • Pet Portraits
  • #UKlockdown
  • Illustrations
  • The decay series
  • Workshops & talks
  • Exhibitions & events
  • Festival Faces
  • Artist profile
  • Newsletter
  • Blog: Art of a Nomad

An average sketching week: Flowers, biscuits & Degas.

20/2/2015

 
Picture
Some beautiful spring flowers, which had to be painted.
Picture
My assistant and I enjoyed sketching Jammy Dodgers
Picture
Guess who woke up when I started to paint.
Picture
Line work
Picture
A fallen Hyacinth.

What did you sketch this week? Why not leave a link in a comment here?

Lunar New Year - Chinese year of the ram

19/2/2015

 
Picture
To celebrate the start of the Chinese year of the Ram, here is a watercolour of a ram I photographed in New Zealand.
Picture

This year is refered to the year of the sheep or goat or ram as the BBC explains in this video Chinese New Year confusion over sheep and where I got this slide:

Digital drawings & a Dozy Dog.

15/2/2015

 
Picture
On Friday, I took Degas to the vets and sketched her as she fought the sedative she was given. She had xrays on her bad leg. There were no obvious fractures or other skeletal problem, but they are being sent for a second opinion. So the question remains, why is she still limping and not getting better?

Last weekend, I finally got a tab and having tried my first digital sketch
at the last Urban Sketchers Symposium (click here to see it)  downloaded a couple of apps. Thanks Omar Jaramillo for the app info. Check out his great watercolours here. These are my first digital doodles:
 
Picture"Uprooted" 28x17cm Watersoluble ink. Available to purchase.
Final things from this week:

Although I'm only three quarters of the way through the Monologue A5 sketchbook, which I started 27th December at the
Winter Wonderland sketchcrawl, I have abandoned it. The main reasons are the perferations and the wrinkling of the paper when water is applied. I tried 2 pages of a Canson but the ink smudges, so I will probably go back to my favourite Daler Ebony sketchbooks.

I started tutoring the mixed media course and will report on that at another time. The first course photo can be seen on my facebook page. and instagram @suepownallartist15


Lastly, I have a finished drawing, the first of the year, seen here. It's a bit of an experiment as I used watersoluble ink.

What have you done this week?



Studying with Liz

8/2/2015

 
As mentioned last week, I have been studying on Liz Steel's Sketching Now online course. Stretched over 12 weeks, Liz has covered all the foundations of successful sketching in well-thought out lessons presented in Liz's charming and exuberant fashion. Each week, there has been an indoor and outdoor prompt. I have missed one week entirely (week 9), only managed 2 of the outdoor prompts, but have managed the majority of the indoor ones. 

Despite being a regular urban sketcher, during the last few months of 2014 I had felt lost. However, having worked through this course, on the 11th January I wrote alongside my coursework:
I LOVE DETAILING LIKE THIS!!!... Using class to remember who I am.
Picture
In the first lesson we had to draw our current sketching kit, which is something I've not done before. My Super5 pen has since run out of ink and I've replaced the Super5 Atlantic ink with Noodler's blueblack. I prefer the Atlantic, but can't get it here in UK and the postage is too high from Germany.
Picture
Click on the image to enlarge it and read the text.
PictureClick to enlarge image.
My biggest struggle has been with doing set up lines. When sketching, I normally work directly in ink and sometimes use dots as a guide to key points of a sketch. I can see the value of doing a minimal set up for complex scenes, but, I struggle to observe properly in pencil. Is it because I can change it? I struggled with that throughout the course. Right is an example from week 4.

Liz's course was very comprehensive, and I'd thoroughly recommend doing one if you have the chance. It was good to be reminded of some of the basics, and to try out the exercises. shh don't tell Liz but I frequently got halfway through some exercises and had totally forgotten what I was "supposed"  to be doing. I aslo frequently missed off adding the colour.

One of my favourite exercises and results was looking at shapes. I finally drew my Korean teacup that I bought in 2001 and has been in storage until now. It was supposed to be in 2 colours but I loved the shapes as it was, which is half the fun of experimenting within a class situation.

Picture
Finally, here's an outside sketch for week 10 that is not of a subject that I would normally choose, but captures a snapshot of dad's garden in winter. If you want to see my other sketches for this course, they are all in an album on flickr: Sketching Now coursework
Picture
The high panel fence between myself & the neighbours with little foilage due to the winter.

Around the World Blog Hop

2/2/2015

 

The questions and my answers:

PictureWith Béliza in Buzios, Brazil.
I've been invited by Béliza Mendes to participate in the Monday Around the World Blog Hop.

Béliza and I first met and the Urban Sketchers Symposium in Barcelona and then again at last year's symposium in Paraty. I was very fortunate to spend a few days with her prior to the symposium exploring and sketching another Brazilian town, which was a great way to warm up for the intensive sketching that occurs at the symposiums.

How does Around the World Blog Hop work?

Every week someone is nominated to answer a few questions about their creative process, post those answers on the following Monday and nominate someone else to do the same.


PictureClick on any image to enlarge it.
What am I working on?

This year is turning out to be a time of experimentation for me. I have been employed as an art tutor for the charity WEA and my first course this year is back at the homeless caf
é Sanctus teaching Mixed Media. As this is not my area of expertise I have been experimenting with texture, collage etc.

Recently, I took a workshop in etching, which I haven't done since art college, and I can't wait to get back in the print workshop as my head is full of ideas.  You can read about the workshop here.


How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I am a pen and ink artist specialising in drawings of buildings, landscapes, boats, portraits and more. Very few people work primarily in black and white like I do nor with the detail and interpretation that I bring to a subject.

This is an example,
Al Minsefah Doorway, which is part of my popular Decay series drawings. More here: Decay Series.

Picture
Al Minsefah Doorway. 2013
PictureInto the Shadows. 2014

Why do I create what I do?

I have always drawn
and from an early age I was aware of a pen drawing of my grandmother's farm hung in my parents' house and I wanted to be able to copy it. It was at art college that I really focused on drawing with all types of ink pens. I mainly had to teach myself the techniques through reading art books and emulating artists I liked as the majority of my lecturers were painters. A college printing course, where I first learnt to etch and yearned to be the next Albrecht Dürer, was a great influence too, but at the time  I found the process too slow and liked the relative immediacy of drawing with pen & ink better.

I choose subjects that appeal to me and themes have repeated throughout my career such as decaying buildings, wood and rocks, which all lend themselves well to the medium. Travel and culture is a big part of my life, and these are also reflected in my drawing subjects.

However, my world is not only black and white. As an urban sketcher, I often add watercolours to my on-location sketches.

Picture
Sketched on location at Souq Waqif, Doha.
How does my creative process work?

I always have a sketchbook near me, although I do not sketch daily, I use it and my phone to record things that catch my eye, from the shadows on trees on a dogwalk to the interaction between people in a coffee shop. From those on-location sketches and/or photos I them compose a drawing, chosing the focal point, what's needed to give context, what to leave in, move position, or take out. Each drawing is not a copy of a single image but an amalgamation. For example,
Picture
Sketching on-location at Muscat Festival.
Picture
One of many reference photos taken.
Picture
The Woodsman. Final drawing.
That brings me to the end of this meme's questions. If you have any comments, or further questions, please leave them below.

Finally, I would like to nominate Kris Wiltse,
www.drawingsfromlife.blogspot.com to post next Monday. Kris does amazing watercolour sketches and inspired me to sketch directly in paint as seen in my skaters here. Don't forget to pop over to see Béliza's post and others in this blog hop.

Café sketching

1/2/2015

 
Picture
Picture
This week's homework for Liz Steel's online course Sketching Now, which I'll be posting about next Saturday, was to sketch in a café. My morning didn't go to plan, which those of you doing the course know, is what happened to Liz too. The brief was to sit head on a café counter and to draw from the focal point out. My idea was to head to Tiptree Tearooms & Jam Factory mid-morning for a cuppa and a scone. However, I got engrossed in some material I was preparing for a course I am giving and didn't get there until midday. I got a head on view, of the side, which was not exciting as the photo shows. To my left was the hostess desk, so I chose to draw that instead.

I used my Super5 pen, which is filled with Noodlers blueblack ink, and started at the desk, added the girl who flitted there and back, then worked more details out from that point. I do like how the sketch looked before I added watercolour.

Picture
Initially, I had thought to have a scone with my tea, but as it was lunchtime I ordered a salad instead. Whilst, waiting for it to arrive I added colour to my sketch. (The finished scanned image is below). Unfortunately, due to a huge queue of people waiting for tables at the hostess desk, I scrapped my plan to sketch my food too, so ate quickly and left.
Picture
I will be posting tomorrow as I've been nominated for the Around the World Blog Hop. Please come back and see what I post and in the meantime check out some of the others' posts such as Béliza's post here and Tina's here.

    About me

    I am a nomadic artist travelling the world for inspiration. Here, I publish my sketchbook work alongside my new finished pieces.

    All posted artwork/images and text are ©Sue Pownall. All rights reserved.

    Email for permission if you want to use them using the contact form.

    It is ok to quote images or text on your non-commercial blog or website as long as you give a credit and link back. It is not okay to pin images.


    Copyright © 2009-2019
    Sue Pownall

    View my profile on LinkedIn

    Tags

    All
    Abstract
    Acrylic
    #aedm
    Animal
    Art
    Artist
    Art Teacher
    Art Tutor
    #atp
    Barcelona
    BigDraw
    Boat
    Boats
    Bourne Mill
    Brazil
    Building
    Cadbury
    Café
    Calligraphy
    Canada
    Canson
    Catalan
    Charcoal
    Charity
    Children
    Chimney
    Chinese New Year
    Christmas
    Class
    Coffee Shop Project
    Colchester
    ColchesterSketchers
    Coloured Pencil
    Competition
    Countryside
    Course
    Coventry
    Cow
    #creamtea
    Cuckoo Farm Studios
    Daler
    Dance
    Decay Series
    Degas
    Degasworld
    Demo
    Devon
    Digital
    #dlaberasmus
    Dog
    Drawing
    #drawingAugust
    Drinkdraw
    Easter
    Edim
    Elephant
    Environment
    EssexBookFestival
    Essex&SuffolkSketchers
    Etching
    Everyday Matters Edm
    Exhibition
    Experiment
    Farming
    Festivalfaces
    Flowers
    Furry Assistant
    Garden
    Garden Sketch
    Gaudi
    Gelliplate
    Giclée Prints
    Giveaway
    Hydrotheraphy
    #IAAFWorlds
    Illustration
    Illustration Friday
    Infographic
    Ink
    Inktense
    #inktober
    InkyFingers
    Italy
    Laloran
    Landscape
    Lifeclass
    London
    Machinery
    Magnify
    Maldon
    Manchester
    Mersea Island
    Mill
    MixedMedia
    Moleskin
    Monologue
    Monoprinting
    Music
    Musicians
    National Trust
    Nature
    Nature Journal
    Nature Photography
    Oman
    Painting
    Paris
    Pen And Ink
    Pencil
    Pen & Watercolour
    People
    Pet
    Photography
    Pool
    Portrait
    Printing
    Pub
    Qatar
    #recordingCoventry
    Review
    Review & Resolutions
    Rio
    Robin
    RolandGarros
    RomanRiverMusic
    Rugby
    Ruin
    SanJordi
    #sbsexpressing
    Science
    Sea
    Seawhite Of Brighton
    Secondary School
    Selfie
    Sennelier
    Senses
    Silvertown
    #silvertownldn
    Singers
    Sketchbook
    #sketchboookskool
    Sketchcrawl
    Sketches
    Sketching
    Slideshare
    #solitarywanders
    Spain
    Spectrum Noir
    Spring
    StaedtlerPigmentLiner
    STEAM
    STEM
    Stencil
    St Patrick's Day
    Super5
    #TavistockEdge
    #TBT
    Teaching
    Tennis
    Theatre
    Tiptree
    Trainee Teacher
    Tree
    Tutor
    Uae
    UK
    Unicef
    Urbansketch
    Urbansketcheronholiday
    Urbansketchers
    Urban Sketchers
    #uskbcn2013
    #uskparaty2014
    #USkWorldCup
    Watercolour
    Wildflower
    Wimbledon
    Winsor&Newton
    Winter
    Wivenhoe
    Wood
    Workshop

    Archives

    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    September 2017
    August 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.