Exercise 4 - Line and wash

Warm up exercises. Continuous line drawing without looking at the page using charcoal, pencil, oil pastel and ink pens

I went back to the slightly promising view out of the kitchen (to do this one I sit on the draining board) This is fountain pen, Tombow marker, Aquarelle stick and water. I like the jars on the shelf and the mugs but not much else.

I have some acrylic ink which I thought was waterproof. It has dried out a bit so it doesn't work with my dip pen so I drew with a stick which I find frustrating as I had to load the stick for every line, sometimes for every half line. I added french ultramarine and raw sienna watercolour and found that the ink ran a bit. Again the jars and bottles were the most successful bit

I tried a more continuous line drawing with a waterproof fineliner and added a wash of french ultramarine

then some raw umber too. Better but a bit cartoony. There is more sense of depth and looking into the next room

 I'm not good with watercolour used in the traditional way. I find liquid media hard to handle but I really like the effects other people get when they're being very loose with watercolour. In the past I've found that working into a failed drawing can produce some interesting results.

This is my first attempt, worked into with Tombow markers, graphite stick, felt tip, coloured pencil, watercolour, white conte and water to move the felt tip ink around. I struggled to unify the view through into the dining room whilst making it seem darker and further away. The jars and mugs seem a bit dull now but I'm pleased with the microwave, its not great but it's so much more interesting than my earlier attempts.

 This is my second attempt with added coloured pencil and diluted acrylic ink for the shadows. More interesting than the original but not as good as the picture above. Once I'd added it to the blog it became blindingly obvious that it needed lines to show the edge of the walls (below)

The instructions say "work on creating different tones using just one or two colours mixed as a wash" so I diluted my dried up acrylic ink and worked on the opposite view sitting by the door and looking back into the kitchen.

This is more wash and line than line and wash as I put in the tones first then drew over them with ink. I find this technique difficult as I struggle to remember what the blobs of shade were supposed to be. I guess that requires more practice. Can you tell that its looking down into the room? I turned the kitchen light off and left the lobby light on to increase the tonal values. Sorry it's a bit on a slope....