While I was chillaxing in front of a movie I whipped out my sketchpad and captured these drawings of the three dogs, they were very tired and so kept still MOST of the time…..I love drawing dogs because they have such great angles and forms, it’s a nice change to drawing people!

Today we had a different model, lots more people came along too which was awesome! Most of these are five, ten and fifteen minutes sketches. I bought a block of cartridge paper and drew on that instead of butcher’s paper, the charcoal was much harder to smudge/remove. Hence some of the drawings are quite grey as I couldn’t remove as much tone as I would have liked. I may need to try a smooth watercolour paper instead.

For the link to my website please visit: http://www.elizabethmartin.com.au

During my time in Katherine I had the pleasure to design, paint and mosaic on the wall of a private residence. The client picked the colours and wanted a design inspired by Nitmiluk (Katherine Gorge). I came up with a handful of ideas and had five days to create this piece….

These are the quick thumbnail sketches, my client chose a design and then we went to choose the paint colours and get them mixed up.

This is the scale painting on paper to get an idea about the colours, mixing and positioning of the mosiac pieces. Because of the time frame the design was kept quite simple but the mural was to be viewed up close and from a distance so this style of design provided detail but boldness at the same time.

Getting the sketch painting ready, mixing up colours…

To transfer the design onto the wall I measured up the middle and then into quarters to make a grid and used the grid on the sketch painting to redraw it to scale using charcoal…

It’s always a good idea to start from the top of the mural so you can cover the drips later!!

The lighter colours were painted first so that any wobbly lines could be covered by the midnight blue…

The midnight blue helps to pull togther the composition and creates a strong contrast to the warm oranges and pinks…

Getting ready to start glueing on the tiles with the tile adhesive…

Detail of the first part of the mosiac, the blue and grey tones formed the river and reflect light like water…

Detail showing the combination of painted surface and shaped mosaics to help create rhythm and movement…

Getting ready to finish the mosaic river and about to begin the grouting process….This was such a fun project, quite therapeutic and a work-out for the brain with tesselation arrangements! My client was thrilled with the final piece, their house is the only one on that street to have a mural!

I can’t help wanting to draw our two tenterfield terriers, they are such gorgeous creatures!

While I was staying down in Katherine I had the chance to sketch two kelpies, they were great to draw because of their long gangly legs and chiseled facial features….

I’ve recently moved back to Darwin from Katherine and was informed by my friends at DVAA that a life drawing group was starting up at the Art Space in Winnellie. We had our first session on Sunday, it was soooo good to get back into drawing again after a five month hiatus! If you are interested in coming along please contact the Darwin Visual Arts Association via their website to get the details.

Here are some of my drawings….

For the warm up exercises I usually draw multiple poses one on top of the other, wiping away the layers underneath as I go. These sketcheswere all done on the one sheet of butcher’s paper and drawn “blind”, that is, without looking at the paper at all, just looking at the model.

These drawings are five, ten and fifteen minute sketches, with some “blind” sketches combined with studies exploring the foreshortening of the face in the prone position. On the right is a more detailed drawing of a seated pose (this is the fifteen minute sketch).

This is a close up of the model’s face from one of the fifteen minute sketches.

This is one of the twenty minute poses with the model in a comfortable rest position. The beauty of using willow charcoal on butchers paper is the ease with which corrections can be made to the drawing. All of these drawings are started using a long paintbrush to measure angles and proportions, more detail and tone is added once these guidelines are in place.

This is a close up of the drawing of the model’s face, usually I squint whilst observing the model in order to see the large areas of tone clearly, then gently build up the features of the face using layers of charcoal.