"I'd forgotten I could draw"

Absolutely green with envy @Sian in Belgium . My standard of drawing doesn't even get on the scale if there was 1! I think I like the owl best. The eye is wonderful.
I have friends who are professional artists who I am sure would be impressed with your skills. I will show them your drawings. Their art is not to my taste at all. Very very abstract usually in acrylic paints and the canvasses are huge sometime over 6ft wide.
Can I ask if you have ever been able to draw a complete horse? Your drawing of the 2 Ardennes horses heads is lovely. My friends attempted on a few occasions to draw horses we have owned and never really succeeded in getting the legs and body right. "They all look like bl..dy sheep" was muttered as drawings were torn up and hurled. Not, regrettably being gifted with any artistic talent or understanding I don't see why drawing horses is so difficult. Bar a few artists most paintings of horses I have seen are not particularly good. You can have a gorgeous painting with wonderful scenery proving the painter has skill but the horse/horses in the paintings are dreadful.

 

Ive been looking through my drawings, and I do mostly head-studies. (Yes, full drawings are v difficult!)

But there is this one....


For sheep, on the other hand....!

 

Your drawing is damned good @Sian in Belgium and pretty accurate anatomically, well done. It is a hugely better effort than my artist friends. 1 of them sells paintings for £1000s but can't make as good an effort as you have. Some months back the husband was illustrating a book being written by a vet pal of his on the "exotic" subject of ticks. I had a look at the drawings and sure enough the drawings of the animals all had a strong resemblance to sheep when in fact they were meant to be horses,cattle and goats as well as sheep. I asked him if he had a penchant for sheep with a huge smirk on my face. He promptly tore the whole lot up and left his studio with steam coming out of his ears. Some artists are a little umm......temperamental. When he had calmed down a bit and returned to the studio I congratulated him on the drawings of the ticks (thought I better try and cheer him up). "Since when did you know what a dermecentor reticulatis should look like"? he enquired. I stopped digging a large hole for myself and left.

 

@Sheal, I've taken your horse-comments as a challenge...

...so I am working on a drawing of a shire. So far, no sheep?

 

Very nearly finished, but I've had to put the drawing on hold... as a commission has just come in, and they need to be done by 18th Dec!

 

Finally finished-ish... still not 100% happy with the neck...



(If you want to see the commission drawings that caused me so much hassle, and made me pause in this drawing, they're on my "Sian's Ink drawings" page on Facebook...)

 

End of the year - and final drawing



Maine lighthouse... J J Guy Longtin's photo used for reference with permission.

 

That's lovely Sian. How long does it take to produce a drawing like that please?

 

Wow, what can I say? brilliant...would be happy to have any of these hanging on my wall.

 

This one was done in a few sittings, and stages.

First, the initial sketchwork in pencil, very lightly inked in (30-45 mins)
Come back when ink is fully dry, rub out pencil thoroughly, as it interferes with the coloured ink (10 mins or so)
Coloured ink done in bold strokes, with a little finer ink-work (45-60 mins)
Again, leave to dry thoroughly...
Back again, and finer watercolour pencil work to fill in details, then very fine inkwork done on top to pick out details. Light colour-shading done with pencils to give subtle texture to the sky, and sign! (60-90 mins - hard to say, as I was also having a good Christmas Carol sing-along!)

...so around 3-4 hours, over a 3-day period.

 

That's a good time considering the detail involved Sian.

 

Here are another random recent two...

....a sleepy leopard. Reference photo by Landi de Cruz, used with permission.


Snow-covered buffalo. Pixabay photo used for reference.

 

Fantastic.