Blind drawing and talking

Last night, I talked to a local art group about the keeping of sketch books. It was a most enjoyable evening ... and I gleaned some useful information on the use of Adobe Photoshop into the bargain. It just shows how you can learn information as well as imparting it when you give a talk. There is also something about standing up and talking in front of an audience to sort out what you really think about a subject.

Towards the end of the evening, I demonstrated the use of blind drawing, a technique I always enjoy, and then cropped the resulting images with various windows to show some possibilities. Because of the need to talk and explain what I was doing while I worked, I found this surprisingly tricky. Still there were some interesting results (for me at least!) and I've added these to this post.

It has to be said that I'm not sure I convinced all my audience that this was a useful drawing technique but three people asked for full details of the book I recommended (Drawing Projects by Nick Maslin and Jack Southern - mentioned here before) so I count this as a definite success!

The whole still life I set up with some overlaying ...

A snippet cropped from the image ...

And another turned through 90* ...

And a seed head done with sneaky peeks ...

That second one may generate a small print block, perhaps. Time will tell ...