Drawing Day

June 06, 2009

drop everything and draw

Drawing Day is a worldwide drawing event encouraging everyone to drop everything and draw for the sake of art. Help us create 1 million drawings online this day.

The above message is from the Drawing Day website, and American Artist has a blog and thread started where drawings can be posted. So I decided to participate this year by waking up in the wee hours (2:15 EST) and began drawing. I recently purchased a new set of Derwent tinted charcoal pencils and was anxious to try them. Since I have not worked in charcoal since college, I felt it would be a nice challenge for Drawing Day.

For my subject I chose to draw “Penny” - my niece Angie’s black labrador retriever. Penny is a very beautiful and sweet dog and loves to “sing” along with blues harmonica. She is quite a character and when she was younger she loved to tote a brick around in her mouth and bury her brick in the back yard. No dog toys for her! I enjoyed doing a portrait of such a sweet dog and will present it to my niece when I get it framed.

CURRENTLY ON THE EASEL:
One of my favorite places to visit and photograph birds is a small community park in Gulfport, FL called Wood Ibis Lake Park. It has a nice walking trail around the lake with benches and two covered picnic areas, a nice decorative fountain in the center and a small butterfly garden. There are numerous resident ducks and is visited frequently by shore birds including great blue herons, white egrets, moorhens and the occasional coopers hawk. The ducks are very used to the local residents feeding them so they are not camera shy. I took a lovely photo of a mallard preening after her bath and decided to do a small acrylic painting of her. I will post a pic when it is done, so check back to see my progress.