Trying to become the best I can be. This has me on a new track with drawing in pencil. I know I have mentioned this now a couple of times but it is the slow plugging away at this that has my full attention. 

Tortoise mode may not be the best learning method but I have found my stride with these drawings. I say drawings, you say sketches, here the distinction is sketching being a quick study and drawing a more finished, exploratory event.  

For a couple of years I have been working small in my studio and trying to time myself by limiting the amount of time on each painting. It has definitely helped with my outdoor painting studies, as one needs to be able to paint much faster as the light changes and since I'm a late afternoon painter the light changes really quickly.

The graphite pictures were going to be loose and quick also but I've found I don't like working like that, it feels unfinished and I have a perfectionist and detailed orientation in my personality trait. Besides I see every flaw, maybe not right away with my own work because the eye is a trickster by trade. My initial lines are soft and exploratory which when off will be erased or disappear under progressively darker lines. Or may be left visible but some of that I do like to see in a finished drawing which is just fine. I will have to think and research how this fits in with my impressionist technique of painting. Just realizing that I haven't been follow the same course as the I've been perfecting a new technique in my painting for the past year but I think I can do that something similar with the drawings. 

Stay tuned I will write more on what I decide I can do around that kind of Impressionist drawing. This may be a misnomer as when I think of the impressionists I think colour and light. Follow my exploration of portraits and drawings on my FaceBook page DeniseMaxwellPainter.

The last couple of weeks I've been doing graphite drawings. Having decided that I can probably learn more and develop my skills faster by practicing my drawing techniques. The struggle has gotten less with painting the portraits but I still spend enormous amounts of time going over and over areas that have not been drawn correctly in the first place. My hope is that by producing the drawing first I will be faster at the painting.

For a short while I was feeling under pressure to keep trying to produce a weekly quota of portrait paintings. A schedule, will be good to maintain though as I have less than a year to accomplish my numbers for my portrait show in November 2015. I have decided that I can also frame and display these drawings and they should be a nice addition to the show overall.

I've been also drawing still life setups of my collectables. These I've been doing to practice my measuring of proportions working from life. I have been learning some new techniques for both working with edges and for measuring. The techniques for drawing edges are a little different with pencils vs paint but it has me looking and deciding where and what edges need to be worked. For measuring I've been using a plumb bob and angles I have a long off knitting needle for angles and triangulation. Ellipses still challenge me and I'll be trying to sketch a few hundred in the next couple of weeks for practice. 

I sure love to learn new things as I move on the developing my skills to become a most excellent painter. The learning will never end I'm sure. As I find new things to challenge my skill level and new techniques to practice my hope is to share some of my perspective on what makes an above average picture so that you can see art differently and why you may find one you love and another not so much.