Day #26, Rounding the Corner with Contour

I just couldn't bear to have the recently failed contour line drawing be the last.  So, in honor of my brave friend who is returning to (teaching!) ballet and tap after a 7+ year hiatus I decided to play with some toe shoes.  Contour is always like jumping off a cliff, you just have to take a breath and do it!

Here's my work page for both efforts.  I really liked the first one despite a little too much foreshortening on the foot in the air.  I think it is simple and clean.  I took a break noting my errors and came back to do another round.  Of course I made new errors in this one but i thought it was believable enough to go ahead and finish it out with some lines for shadows.  Then of course the watercolors were right there so one thing led to another.....

Toe Shoes

7" x 5" ink and watercolor on paper

I know very little about ballet so I couldn't even properly name this sketch.  But I think I like it.  Ballerinas sure can contort their feet...I can't imagine supporting my entire body on just my toes.  I went ahead and matted this piece because the black mat helps bring out the thin lines of the drawing.

You will find this on my etsy shop for $30.00 this month, or contact me if you won't need shipping.  I am definitely in the mind set to find some more ballet feet and try some more poses.  Hope you enjoyed your weekend.  Tomorrow marks the beginning of the last week of this 30 in 30 challenge.  Yippee!

When Pigs Fly...#24

Somedays you just gotta laugh!  When what starts as a great idea fails, and fails again, and fails again... It's time to back up and take a different route.  So laugh with me here...while nothing is a guaranteed success there is much to be gained by failures, or so I am told.

Day #24 was to be a contour drawing of a cute figurine I have of a pig with wings.  Flying pigs is a current family mantra/joke and I could just see it in a small painting, framed, representing all the humor it involves. So I got ready to draw a masterpiece of cuteness.

Now, this is one mean looking pig...not acceptable at all.  (And it was the second one I attempted.)

It took four tries to get a decent looking (i.e. not mean) faced porker and about then I was losing interest in the entire thing.  I have a painting started I am itching to get to and was far more vested in seeing if I could manage a palette knife with my lefty than whether or not I could draw an imaginary swinelet.

So I gave it the ole'college try and decided to head on over to the paints.  My muse wants to play with Eola Park a bit more so stay tuned for another round of the fountain.  The pigs will have to fly another time: day #24 is done and over!