A sketch a day: Frozen ~ pen and ink, graphite pencil on Canson drawing paper, 6″ x 4″

Yelena Shabrova ~ A sketch a day: Frozen ~ pen and ink, graphite pencil on Canson drawing paper, 6" x 4"
pen and ink, graphite pencil on Canson drawing paper, 6″ x 4″

It started with a reference photo of majestic icicles which I managed to lose shortly after mapping some details in pencil. Not willing to dig through my huge and badly documented collections of shots taken over 15+ years, I decided to continue on my own and see where it ends. Somehow it ended in an abstract that has little to do with icicles or anything else of that kind, but it was fun to work through it without much commitment to the end result.

A sketch a day: horse head

Yelena Shabrova ~ A sketch a day: horse head ~ graphite pencil on Canson drawing paper, 4" x 6"
graphite pencil on Canson drawing paper, 4″ x 6″

I wanted to finish this one yesterday and make it my last horse drawn in the departing year of the Horse, but of course that didn’t happen. So let it be the first horse of the new year with many more to follow.

I want to thank you all for following me and supporting my art and wish you all the very best in the new year 2015!

Further experimenting with canvases

Looking back at all my attempts to make colored pencils play nice with the digital canvas, I have to admit that they certainly prefer a traditional linen one. So the blank digital canvases that I still have will be used for other media. For example, a graphite pencil:


Miniature – graphite pencil on canvas, 3.5″ x 2.5″

Things learned with this one:

– only soft graphite works, harder grades scrape the priming off the canvas without leaving noticeable marks
– for blending, small sponge makeup applicators and bristle brushes work best
– common erasers are of little help when you need a highlight or to scrape off a mistake, but kneaded eraser works wonderfully (I am using a Koh-i-Noor Hardtmuth eraser that comes with its own case and like it better than other brands I had before)
– an x-acto knife can be good for small bright highlights, but using it requires care because it easily gets deep into priming and scrapes it off
– areas treates with a x-acto knife are still good for blending tools, but pencil marks behave unpredictably, so better be avoided

My other canvas experiment that is yet to be finished is a mix of the black India ink and graphite. I am not sure how I like the result so far, but we’ll see.