EDM 114: Draw a shopping cart or basket

Or, A Good Excuse to Sleep In…

Wow, another week in the tubes here at The Artistic Biker.  I picked up quite a few subscribers this week, mostly through Twitter.   If you are not a twit who tweets on twitter, you are just not hip.  Of course, I don’t think hip people say “hip” anymore.  Mostly that’s because these younger cats aren’t cool enough to pull it off.

To those of you who saw the super-secret thank you page buy following the “donate” link, I can’t thank you enough and I am very glad to know that you are enjoying it.

Monday Discovery

Pushing the Darks!

This week’s Monday Discovery, I published a lovely letter from Jeanette Jobson congratulating me on my new site and giving me some valuable constructive criticism to help me continue to improve.  I also coaxed a lesson out of my beautiful young bride, the art teacher, on emphasizing depth with shading by Pushing the Darks.

…My DH (Dear Husband) has a habit of getting the basic shapes down and then making up the shading as he goes along, never looking at the object again. The artist in me says, “Wow, cool!” The teacher in me screams, “Wrong, do it again!” (Just like Pink Floyd.)…

Tuesday’s Challenge:
Hierarchy of Love

Meeting Illustration Friday’s theme for the week, I posted The Hierarchy of Love.  This challenge inspired a ton of other ideas I hope to be sharing with you over the next few months!

…If you stick around this site long enough, you will hear (read) me go on and on about love. Brought up by hippie-wanna-be parents in the ’70’s I was || close to being named Starshine…

Wednesday Figure Drawing
Oklahoma City Colored Pencil Society

No, the OKC Colored Pencil Society of America did not have figure drawing.  I normally meet my figure drawing group on Tuesdays and tell you about it on Wednesday.  However, on the last Tuesday of the month, the OKC CPSA meets and I go there instead.

…We watched a video demonstration on layering and using watercolor pencils to lay down a base wash. I thought that violated the rules, but hey, I’m all for that anyway…

Thursday’s Net Challenge:
Colored Pencil Challenge

Inspired by the meeting of the OKC CPSA, I looked into a colored pencil challenge for the month of May over at Wet Canvas.  I found a neato photo reference of an old truck headlight.  I thought I might work that up large scale and post it as a WIP.

…take some time with this one and post my *WIPs as I go along. Maybe I’ll
even get it done by the end of the month deadline…

Friday Critique:
A Budding Young Artiste

For Friday’s Critique, I shared with you some of Girl2’s recent works.  She’s quite the painter for 3.

…Yes, it’s evident that she is well on her way to being the ballerina,astronaut, veterinarian, biker, artiste, queen that she is destined to become.  I wouldn’t mind applying for that job myself…

Saturday’s Sketchbook:
Saturday Sketches

My little family and I took a trip to the OKC Zoo on Saturday.  We had a great time and even got to wear Girl2 out on the paddle boats.  We closed the place down like college kids on a pubcrawl!  Also posted EDM 13: draw something ugly that you love.

…Take for instance a nasty, greasy, old, chicken leg fried in week old
shortening… with a tasty batter of 11 secret herbs and spices cooked to sweet and salty perfectio…

Weekly Mailbag

Last week I posted an open invitation to participate on Friday’s Critiques.  I have one opening left for May if someone is interested in meeting me online for a chat about it, please contact me.

I sent an email to Jeff of http://jeffknecht.com, inviting him to participate in Friday’s Critiques.  Here is how he responded:

Jonathan/Blade:

Thanks for sending me this note.  Sorry I haven’t responded sooner — I’ve been swamped with work and home projects the past couple of weeks and am just now getting caught up on my email.  Also, I wanted to give your proposal the thought it deserves.

So, yes, I would be very interested in sharing critiques and experiences.

How would you like to do this?  Do you just want to point me to a few specific drawings on your blog?  Do you want to send them over email?  Something like gotomeeting.com?  Some sort of conference call?

Of course, I would like your feedback too — though, I’ve got to get my stuff out and actually DRAW something for you to look at
:)

Anyway, let me know what you’ve got in mind.  Hopefully, we’ll both get something out of it.  If nothing else, it should force me to get off my duff and draw a little more often.

Thanks again for getting in touch.  I really look forward to continuing the conversation.

Jeff

After a few more notes back and forth we finally decided on a forum, but the timing was a bit difficult.  He posted about this on his blog.

We ended up meeting online this morning at 10:30am.  We had a GREAT chat and critique.  We are working out the editing and we will both be posting part of a two part chat session some time this week.  With any luck, it’ll be in time for Friday’s Critiques seeing as how that’s what it was meant for in the first place.
;)