Christmas toys

These are Christmas tree toys I bought in a small town in England about 6 years ago. The are all hand made out of wood. Very old fashioned. I love them.

Having fun with gouache

Watercolor and gouache sketches

My sister was cleaning her studio the other day and as a result I've got quite a load of art supplies: water colors,gouache, oil pastel, etc.. I was dying to try gouache.It reminded me time from childhood. My dad had a gouache set and we loved painting with it.It was such fun!

Charlie's drawing

It always amazes me how effortless kids make their drawings. They don't analyze them or 'work' hard, but what comes as a result is never ugly.

Recent paintings

iPhone doodles

It looks like the only time I get to draw lately is on Go train.

iPhone doodles

Simple Value Plan

Continue assignments from Peggi Kroll-Roberts DVDs. Merged a lot of small shapes to simplify the information.
For value studies I am now using acrylic paint: Titanium white and Raw Umber. There is no particular reason for Raw Umber. I just happen to have only those two colors in acrylic.

The benefits:
- no need to prime canvas
- you can paint on paper
- easy to clean brushes
- no chemicals in the air

Eyes. Part 1.

Asaro explains the structure of the eye in his book "Planes of the head":


My analysis on real faces with 3 types of lids (not slanting, slanting up, slanting down):

Asaro: interlocking contour lines and planes. Part 2

Asaro: interlocking contour lines and planes. Part 1

P.S. in the lower drawing the chin is off the center. Did not see it until now :-)

I saw similar approach in Nathan Fowkes drawings, take a look here.

Basic planes of the head

"..The planes of the head should be memorized, for through them we have a foundation for rendering the head in light and shadow..." (A.Loomis)

Working on these magazine photos I was surprised to see how smooth were faces. Almost no visible planes. Loomis actually writes about it:

"...If you have softened the edge so much as to have lost the plane, the drawing is bound to take a smooth, photographic look. For this reason, planes have to be established when you are drawing from a photograph, since they are not apparent..."

Human skull

Andrew Loomis suggests to study human skull to learn the bone structure.

Head construction with features

Now I am practicing putting face features on a "ball". If your ellipses are at the right places adding features is easy.

Head construction: problem solved!

If you studied head construction by Andrew Loomis you'll understand the issue I'm talking about in this post.

On page 21 of Drawing the Heads and the Hands Loomis describes his method of constructing a head using analogy with a ball and a nail. It looks very simple and easy to understand...until you actually start constructing a head yourself.

My problem was with the "ear" line. I could not figure it out.I gave up and moved on.

A few days ago, I was reading a ConceptArt forum and came across the post called "How to correctly establish ellipses using Loomis head construction?" Needless to say how happy I was to discover that someone had asked my question. But the real treasure was ahead. There was that JohnB who shared his method of establishing ellipses. It was answer to my prayers! Thank you, JohnB!!!

Here is a link to the entire post: click here

JohnB has his own blog, interesting and very informative.

And this is John's tutorial I recreated:


1. Draw a cicle and mark the center (A)
2. Think about position of the face: is it looking up or down? turned to the left or right? Add a point (B) to where a "brow" cross will be
3. Connect A and B
4. Draw a brow line as per step 2
5. Add a line running through the center that is parallel to brow line
6. Add tick marks perpendicular to the line in step 5
7. Draw ellipse that starts and ends at tick marks you did in step 6 and passes brow point (B)
8. Draw a middle line (face line) that is tangent to the ellipse you just drew. This line determines the tilt of the face plane. This line and line you drew in step 4 are what Loomis calls "the all-important cross on the ball".
9. Draw a line that is parallel to the middle line from step 8. This is what Loomis refers to as a nail in the ball
10. Add tick marks that are perpendicular to the "nail" line
11. Draw ellipse that connects tick marks and goes through the brow point. This is a brow line.
12. Add tick marks that are perpendicular to AB line
13. Draw ellipse that connects the tick marks. This is "ear" line.

Inspiration: Matisse

I was in my twenties when I saw this painting at the State Hermitage Museum.
I still remember the impression it made on me: I felt as if I was standing in the middle of the circle engulfed in heat of the dancers moving around me. It was breathtaking!

iPhone doodles

iPhone doodles

To kill time I sometimes draw with my fingers on iPhone.

Proportions of the Male Head

From "Drawing The Head & Hands" by Andrew Loomis.

Value Studies

From all objects flowers were hardest to paint: changes in values are very subtle. Besides, I have not learned how to simplify yet.