Pretend it’s a portrait.

The day job kept me pretty busy today and into the evening. But I did manage to get some art time in and did this watercolour and ink sketch of Fran Lebowitz. I had never heard of her until watching the Netflix series “Pretend It’s a City”. I really enjoyed it and thought she was interesting and funny. Love her style and grumpiness.

Fran Lebowitz sketch

I’m pretty happy with this. I tend to tighten up when drawing/painting people but I like the looseness of it. I would have liked to work on it a bit longer but this is all I had time for today.

Famous Faces

Abraham Lincoln is the first face that I remember feeling compelled to try to draw. Many years ago in junior high school while learning about the American Civil war, I would study the high contrast, black and white photos of Lincoln in my history book. I would stare at his photo so long and so intently that sometimes it felt like I was transported back in time.  His wrinkly, weathered face and scraggly beard was too much to resist and so I spent an entire semester drawing his face over and over.

Back then I would have drawn with a ball point pen or a number 2 pencil and I would have tried very hard to reproduce the photo exactly. These days I try for a looser more expressive way of drawing. Here is Lincoln drawn with charcoal.

Abraham Lincoln Charcoal Drawing

Hello World!

My name is Stephanie. Welcome to my blog. I would like to dive right in but feel the need for an introductory post to get things started. My plan is to discuss art, art making and to share my art and art making process. I expect things will evolve from there. I consider myself a painter however, I have recently decided to go back to basics and incorporate daily drawing into my art practice and to explore other media.