Platinum 3776, Platinum Carbon Black

We’re still anticipating spring and hard-pressed to find sketching venues that we haven’t visited a dozen times this winter.  Celine suggested that we all go to her place for a sketching session and we  jumped at the chance, because Celine has a great studio environment and lots of props just waiting to be sketched.

Five of us had a ball sketching, laughing and chatting that day.  My first sketch was a small plaster head of what can only be an Irishman.   I did it in my conventional manner, using a fountain pen.

For my second sketch I chose a large plaster ear that Celine had hanging on her wall.  Only an artists have a plaster ears on their walls and I wanted to take advantage of Celine’s ear.  As I started drawing the first couple lines, however, I realized that so much of an ear is defined by soft edges that I decided to take a different approach.  I got out a waterbrush that’s filled with very dilute ink and started drawing all the shadow shapes.  I used multiple layers to achieve a couple different values.  In this way, I blocked in the overall shape of the ear and then I could add some ink lines to emphasize contour and  some shapes.  I was pretty pleased with this approach and I might find myself doing it more often.  Doing this sort of thing is great practice in seeing form.  Thanks, Celine, for a great day.