Warm-ups to kick Artist's Block

This is a "wire drawing" of an eye, done while I was up at the North Shore, relaxing.  Whenever I have art blocks, I have 3 or 4 tricks to get myself back into the mood.  One of these involves sketching anything with a pencil.  Then I use an ultrafine marker to connect all the lines, and finally, I add thicker lines with a fine marker.  Before you know it, an hour has passed, and now you'll be ready to paint the moon!  Another trick is to paint color studies, using only 3 colors, and starting with only 4 shapes.This color study started with a blue square surrounded by yellow.  In the middle of the blue square was a yellow olive shape with a red center.  Do you see them? I used manganese blue, cadmium yellow, and red rose deep.  At the very end, I allowed myself a mixture of alizarin crimson and winsor green for the black colors. Now you have 2 tricks to keep that mean old artist's block at bay!  Good luck!

Wire Drawings with my family

Karen's drawing

Janine's drawing

Nancy's drawing

I just returned from a trip to Spearfish, SD to visit my parents.  My sister, Nancy, and niece, Janine, were also there visiting.  One evening, I taught them how to do a wire drawing of a sewing machine.  The plan is for Nancy to use one of the drawings for her new business card.  Her business is Functional Art.  Check it out!  Great texture art for the home! To do a wire drawing, you must scribble, then do a contour drawing, and then link all the pieces.  Kind of hard to explain without a visual.  Someday I may do a video on it.  Sorry I haven't posted for awhile.  I'll catch up in the coming days, OK?  It's been a very busy spell for me!