Face and a window

Dear Sarah - Day 165 of our daily drawing exchange

June 14, 2024
Hi Nikki,

Yesterday (and overnight) I was on Nana duty, which culminated this morning in French toast and a tutorial from Kai on how to play Super Mario Kart. I asked him to teach me because I have never played a video game in my life, and I thought it might be fun to try. Hilarity ensued. Talk about being all thumbs! But he was very supportive. ("Good try, Nana," he said every time Mario tripped and fell or exploded.) Mind you, I did all this with a weird aura migraine plus nausea, which is still lingering.

When I got home I did the second to last tutorial in my drawing course, and drew a creditable window framed in stone. I think the artist/teacher must live in the UK because her drawing examples are usually of ye olde buildings. Anyway, I'm happy with the result.

Then I tried a technique I saw on IG: putting down a wash of watercolour and then pressing wrinkled plastic wrap into the paint and letting it dry. I wanted to make a father's day card for my son--something not flowery. It's being pressed under some heavy books right now--will send it to you tomorrow.

I really liked the tunnel to nowhere drawing you did yesterday--very effective. Did you do it from a photo or from memory?

Hope you haven't had too insane a day.

XO S

Hi Sarah -

Though I attempted to take several photos while in the tunnel, none of them were any good - too dark, didn’t have time to override the phone’s best efforts to fix the terrible lighting (I didn’t really want a slow shutter speed - I wanted a silhouette) - so I didn’t look at the photos after I got home. But, the image of the tunnel - that distant arc of light at the end of the darkness, the figure heading in that direction stuck with me… So, I just drew from memory to try to get the impression of the experience.

Today, I experimented with doing a wet on wet wash, blow-drying it (who has time to wait?) and then seeing if I could find a face in the splotches. Kept the actual pen over the top of the colour super loose to give the impression of a face - I think it works better when it’s not so distinct (the lips, barest suggestion of a chin).

I’ll try this again and maybe limit the number of pen strokes or give myself a time limit of 10 seconds to see how little I can add to a splotch to suggest an actual thing. Faces are good because we are programmed to see them… two dots and and a line are enough for a smiley face… Next time I’ll try to remember to photograph the wash before adding anything and then I could redo the exercise using the iPad to try various approaches (either finding different ways to bring out the same subject or maybe see how many different subjects are lurking in the same pools of colour).

I love windows and doors as subjects. Who lives behind that window?

Cheers,
Nikki