Welcome to Rick's Art & Design

May 19, 2013

For those of you that have been faithfully following this blog you my just recognize the image below as I have written several articles about it. Actually not about this particular piece, but the pieces that came before it. As I stated in those articles I stated the highs, such as the original drawing and scanning the drawing to try ideas on that before working on the drawing itself, as well as the lows, totally destroying the drawing with aged acrylic paint.

I now give you the finished piece of "The Picker." There was a bit of experimentation on it so listen closely folks.

I first took a piece of smooth Bristol board and using a paper towel, smeared the paper with graphite and turpentine mixture I had to let the paper a day to let the turpentine to evaporate. I then started the base drawing, first very roughly then tightening it up a bit. One of the most indispensable items that I used during the drawing was an electric eraser to bring out the highlights. If I erased too much, no big deal, just add a bit more graphite. Once the drawing was to the point that I liked, I applied spray fixatives to the entire page to prepare it for the wash of oil paint that I was about to use on it as turpentine will blur the graphite drawing.

Next I broke out my paints and did a pit of splattering using an old tooth brush to give the piece some texture. I used a variety of colors and to be honest, I don't recall all of the colors that I used. I then used very thin washes of paint to tint the drawing. Believe it or not this process goes pretty quickly. The thing that slows down the process, is waiting for the turpentine to evaporate before adding the color. Yes, the pesky turpentine strikes again!

The final bit is to add a bit more detail using colored pencils and just a touch of oil pastels. The resulting painting is what you see. Enjoy!

Once again, I have added new drawings to the Life Drawing area section.

May 1, 2013

Welcome to May everybody! It's no secret that for the last six months or so I have been looking into the artistic technique of Drew Struzan. I have been learning as much as I can so that I can add his techniques to my art. I am not trying to copy his style mind you, I have my own style, I just want to add some color and dimension to my drawings. With that said, I did this piece with that in mind.

There are some things that I like about it and there are things that I don't. I won't tell you what they are as you just might like the parts that I don't. One mistake that I did make is that I used the charchoal pencils that I used on the picture of the bull rider in my last post. Although I like using charcoal pencils, I cannot get the detail that I want when I do a French Washed pencil piece. So once again there is a lesson learned. You have to love it when you come out with a drawing that you like and learn a lesson along the way!

If you like it, if you don't leave a comment and let me know!

April 29, 2013

I didn't know what to draw today. So I went through a bunch of photos and found a bunch that I had taken at some rodeos. I had the idea when I took them that I would use them for reference images someday. Well, today was the day for the image below. I wanted to to the drawing quickly to really get the action and energy that this massive bull showed at the rodeo. From start to finish this drawing took about an hour to complete. I used charcoal pencils and drew it on brown paper. I rather like how it turned out, but the next time I use charcoal pencils, I will make the drawing a bit bigger do I can get some more detail into the drawing.

I also added some more drawings to the Life Drawing section that were drawn using the same charcoal pencils.