Kittys Drawings

Hi All!
Well I’m back from Fiji! No photos for you because I really really sucked at taking them. Maybe more on that later.

I’m totally immersed in a drawing at the moment which won’t be finished for a little while so I thought I better put something up here so I don’t neglect my little blog.

Also – the sewing backlog will have to wait for the weekend and the daylight that will bring for photos.

Until then, I’ll show you some patterns I’ve bought recently.

This is the closest thing I’ve found to the draped dress I want to make. It’s a start! There are a few patterns out there but the prices are very prohibitive. I don’t feel comfortable spending $40+ for a pattern just yet! And I think some of those prices are a bit unwarranted. Anyway. I want to make view 2 of this in one of those slinky fabrics I picked up from Savers a while back. View 1 is a bit too stuffy with those long sleeves and high neck don’t you think?
I want to somehow maxtreme (heh) that draping a little bit more so I’ll have to play around with that when I get to it.

And isn’t this the most adorable summer dress you’ve ever seen?
The scalloping is so awesome especially at the hem! I might try this out first with one of the floral bedsheets Savers finds. I think it might need quite a bit of tweaking near the bust since these Simplicity patterns always have so much room around there.
Now the sheets I have are all cream, green and/or pastels. What do you think would look nice as contrast?

Also – I changed my header a little bit and moved the sketchbook spirals from the background into the header. How do you guys go with scaling on my blog? Does it look better all in the header or should I move it back to where it was? How big are all your monitors? My work and home monitors are both quite large so to ME it all looks good but I need your opinions!!
I don’t know how to move my Gallery and About page either. Eeep!
I think I need to harass someone with more web Skillz than I to get it all sorted.

That’s about it for this fluff post with very little real content. Til the weekend folks!

Hi All!
Hope you all had a happy Easter! I gorged on lots of food. Not much chocolate though surprisingly. I’m probably the biggest anti-traditionalist you’ll ever meet, so the standard “family” holidays aren’t my bag. Especially since I’m an “orphan” in that my folks live interstate. And so do my boyfriend’s folks.  So while most people chow down at family lunches around these times of year, I’m hanging out with friends or just The BF – which is awesome.
Family is great – and mine are particularly cool, but I never had the whole extended family thing – cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, you-know-the-drill, being an immigrant and all (does anyone else think that’s a funny word?)…so all my life the holiday seasons have been enjoyed with the special family you choose, friends! Yay!

ANYWAY – Onto the draw. I didn’t get many entries, and that’s okay! Means better chances to WIN. So thanks to Random.org I got these results:

Those winners are:

Lorraine

and

nightowl_72

I will try and track down emails for you guys tomorrow, but if you want to speedy the process you can email me at kittysdrawings (at) gmail (dot) com – send me your address and I will post out the prizes ASAP. Yay!

Other things: I’ve been doing some sewing. Still mega behind on showing you my finished projects! I whipped up a gathered skirt yesterday which in terms of sewing skillz, is actually neatly done…BUT – I don’t think I like the style that much. It may have been the top I was trying it on with….Regardless, its casual and comfy enough for the Esz Resort Collection (teehee).
Two patterns also arrived today which will become part of the Collection, and I’ve started cutting one already. It’s a 50′s wrap dress which doesn’t look that tricky but there’s lots of pieces and lots of facings so it might take me a while.
I also finished a simple light purple round neck blouse. It’s quite nice…..but….I dont think I’ve got anything to match with purple yet. Must remedy that.

SO MUCH TO DO!
Ack! Better get back to it.

Byyyyeeeeee

Hiiiiiii!!
Lightning fast posting tonight….Just a few sketches I did on the weekend from “The Figure in Motion”. Retro 70′s nudes FTW lol!!

Excuse the really dodgy heads and clumsy shading.

Should bring some colour back into this little blog huh?
ConceptArt is up to its 200th CHOW which involves a month long contest with the theme “Monarch of CHOW”. We have to a depict a king or queen of a particular music genre. TOO MUCH FREEDOM. Soooo many ideas! I should start sketching soon. Need to think about this one a lot.

You know I haven’t even done anything digital for a few weeks now? Feels strange.
Life drawing last night was fantastic too – if a little messy. Silly me to wear a white top on the day we’re meant to colour in our entire page with BLACK charcoal. Messy messy. Will attempt to somehow capture my drawings with the camera. Dreading the thought.
Okie then seeyas!!

Hiiii!
Gee haven’t I been slack? Two weeks into life drawing and I’m only posting now. And I never did find that memory card so I had to use another camera instead. This is why the photos are REALLY crappy. Seriously I’m ashamed at how bad they are. Should be taking them in daylight but it gets dark pretty early these days.
So this is gonna be a mega post with heaps of cruddy images. I’ll work on making them better for my next life drawing post.
We’ll start from the beginning and go from there. Click to make bigger – I’m trying to keep them smaller this time… Sorry I can’t be bothered formatting them so they look tidy either. Meh!




That was the first week. Notice the different techniques? We had to do some exercises like drawing without looking at the paper, drawing with our eyes shut, with our non-preferred hand and with a continuous line only. Tricky stuff! Oh and the one saying “Sorry” is when we had to rotate and finish other people’s drawings.
Onto this Monday:

Practicing negative space…

Really bad proportions….Yipes

Overall…I am loving the classes! They go for 2 hours and it’s just the right amount of time. My hands get filthy with charcoal and graphite. Awesome. And it’s all kind of freeing.
Oddly enough, out of all the people there it’s only me and my two buddies from ConceptArt that are using tone in our drawings at this stage. Which would be frustrating cos getting lines right with soft charcoal is a pain in the butt. All learning I guess. Ick these are pretty horrible drawings. It feels better to use really soft graphite over charcoal. And I need to get me some spray fixative.

Well I’m off to bed. I should be drawing more outside of life drawing. Slackie. This is invariably what happens when I pick up READING again. I have two books on the go right now so they’re taking up more of my time than they should. Naughty.

Night!

PS…and this is what happens when Puss wants in on the action….

What is it with cats and paper? She was diving under the sheets! Crazy kitty.

Hi Everyone!
Hope you’ve all been having a fantastic easter and not gorging on TOO many eggs! Hahahaa kidding, eat away – I can’t deny anyone the right to eat chocolate.
Things in our household have been typically non-traditional. No easter eggs here. I think I’m over chocolate in chocolate form. Unless it’s Koko Black of course. Everything else is too sweet. I am becoming more partial to things like icecream and cakes oh yeh. Yum!

We went to see Clash of the Titans in 3D – which was good. Well….No worse than I was expecting. Which wasn’t much. It wasn’t groundbreaking cinema….but nice for the Sam Worthington factor teehee. I think Avatar kind of ruined 3D movies for me at this point. Set the bar too high. There wasn’t much added to Clash of the Titans by wearing 3D glasses – Alice was the same. It would be more worth it for movies that are made entirely in 3D like that How to Train Your Dragon which is out now – or which use the same technology which Avatar did. So until everyone is making movies like they did with Avatar, I wouldn’t bother paying extra for the 3D screen.
I do like booking online though – No waiting in line with the plebs at Melbourne Central hahahaa.

Been watching a few other films at home. Most notable was The Wrestler – quite depressing but very very well made. Perfect role for Mickey Rourke. Also another surprising one called Pandorum. No idea where I found it but it’s great. A sci-fi flick set on a spaceship heading to a new planet found to possibly contain life, where things go wrong of course – their hyper-sleep schedule is messed up and they wake to a ship overrun by weird creatures. That want to kill them of course. Great tension and quite a few plot twists and a fantastic ending. I was very pleasantly surprised – as much as I love reading sci-fi, the movies can often suck pretty hard.

Well onto the drawing….This is what has been taking up my time – in the same style as the last one….Kind of don’t like it as much. Meh. But it’s okay I suppose

Okay then well I better start thinking of what to draw next. And get some food. Hungry.
Seeyas!

Hi!
Something I’m drawing is taking a little longer than expected. So in the meantime I’d thought I’d give everyone a heads up about a few changes around here.

I’ve changed my blog background a bit – a scan of my latest sketchbook which is a bit better looking than the last one. Also, I’ve updated my gallery with more recent work and performed a heavy edit. I’ll be adding back some of the graphic design work but some of those old illustrations had to go! I also found a fantastic WordPress plugin that makes the gallery a lot neater, cleaner looking and much easier to navigate. No need to hit the Back button all the time. Annoying!

Since it’s Easter and I’ll have a lot of time to do stuff, I’ll keep tweaking things and I’ll finish this drawing So until tomorrow, hope you’re having a good Fri(Thurs)day

This Sunday I finally caught up with the Melbourne Gra-Fight Club (cool name) – the weekly sketch meet with the peeps from ConceptArt.org (from here-on in referred to as CA cos I can’t be bothered typing it).  The usual routine, an arvo of sketching people passing by and practicing your speed and accuracy. We meet on the steps of the GPO and weather permitting, hang about there or move on to other locations.

I managed to spot Harbour-Master as she waited for a tram and because she’s always dressed impeccably, I had to draw her. Its always the clothes that attracts me to sketch a person – you’ll see that trend in the other drawings I did that day Its a bit of a dodgy sketch cos I was still warming up. Eerrrggh. The one next to it is some more warm ups just of faces.

Gettin the hang of things…

This chick had the weirdest outfit….Shiny black leather/vinyl jacket – biker style….with a long, pale blue tie-dye skirt and weird sandal type things that were like sandals from the ankle down and boots from the ankle up. ODD.

The fat dude at the bottom – well he wasn’t fat. He was just wearing an enormous all weather jacket with equally enormous cargo shorts and then these tiny skinny legs sticking out the bottom.

Some more:

Now to the final drawings which are quite a bit better. Shows how much you can improve just by warming up. Just like a sports star! Hahahaa.
First…A hipster. Wearing faded double denim that looked vintage. White flappy shirt and t-shirt hanging out…..skinny skinny pants on skinny skinny legs and scuffed boots with white ankle socks (and ankles) showing. Hunched over suitably as befitting a hipster of his pedigree
And a very sharp looking old gentleman leaning against a pole listening to the folk band that was playing in front of us. He had a cool shape for drawing and was standing very still hehe. I completely FAILed on his face though ha. The chick is a woman that dashed by and I liked her hair but only had seconds to memorise her profile.

These are: a dude in a huge blue chambray shirt with skinny legs poking out from underneath. People with weird proportions are interesting – particularly when those proportions are entirely a result of the clothes they’re wearing.
There was also a little Aboriginal boy who was watching the band. He was holding a football and had his jumper draped and tied over his shoulder like one of those across body bags.
The girl was really pretty and had dyed orange hair and a side ponytail. I wish she had stayed longer because I liked her face – would have been good to get it down more accurately. The others are just more odd proportions.

That was it for the sketching that day. We headed down to see the Ron Mueck exhibition when it started to rain. Fantastic exhibition – if you’re in Melbourne I urge you to get to the NGV before the 18th of April and see it. Only $15 entry. If you don’t know who Ron Mueck is, here is a sample of what we saw:

Phew!! Such a massive post!
Seeya all again soon – oh and my life drawing starts on the 12th of April not the 21st so it’s sooner than I thought! YAY!
Bya!