October Virtual Sketch Date

The virtual sketch date is a blog event happening every month, where a reference image is posted and any blogging artist can give a shot at the image. The artists then post their attempts onto their respective blogs and link to the main blog site. It is a fantastic event, since I always love seeing how various artists tackle the same subject. This has been happening for a few months now, and this is my first entry.

Peared - colored pencil on water color paper
(c) Nithya Swaminathan

I started doing the last month's reference itself but could not complete it before the deadline. This month's reference was so irresistable that I had to give it a shot. I am glad I could complete it on time. I have a blast doing this, as I have never done pears before. They are such fabulous little things, full of character! We do not get these kind of pears here and I haven't been able to do them. I am quite happy with how it turned out and I cannot wait to see what other artists have done.

Today also happens to be the International Sketchcrawl, and though this doesn't qualify at crawling, it counts as sketching at least :-)

Primary colors

Yet another attempt at working from life, also with a limited palette. I wanted to try my hand at doing fabric, that too from life. Cannot say I am entirely satisfied with the fabric, I am sure there is a long way to go. Fabric is one of those things that I cannot seem to figure out for the life of me! It is something I really want to master. More so after my visit to the Rijksmuseum and seeing all those pieces by the Dutch Masters with jawdropping fabric.

Primary Colors
Colored pencil on paper, 4 * 5 inches.

I have used only the primary colors, and the complement of each of them. That makes it crimson red, cobalt blue, lemon yellow and Orange, Violet and Viridian green. The finish looks kinda crappy coz my daughter stepped in to the scene when it was going all fine and decided she wanted to eat that apple! Yeah, only THAT apple. So she picked it up and needless to say the other objects also got distrubed. Thankfully the apple was the one I completed first so it was ok. I took a photo of the composition and completed the fabric with the help of the reference. The patterns in the fabric were not exactly the same in the reference but I had to do with it! I hope for better cooperation from my daughter going forward ;-)