Wednesday, January 13, 2010

New Years Resolutions and Sketch Dump

My new years resolution: draw more, learn pastels.

My parents got me an amazing set of Prismacolor pastels for Christmas, they are wonderful. I've never tried pastels before, so this is all very new to me. Heres my first attempt, a quick portrait of my dog, Missy. I learned a valuable lesson: don't get too excited, sketch first, or you get an out of proportion pup. But strangely shaped dogs aside, it was a lot of fun trying these out and I'm excited to try more. I'm considering taking a pastel class at a local art studio, could be fun, we'll see!

Also below are sketches of people at JFK and Burlington airports from last week. Below that are "master sketches" of Disney's Tarzan- these are not my original poses, they are just copies that I did of pre-existing work to warm up. And last are a few doodles of tree branches with snow, I thought it was kind of fun

More stuff soon!










4 comments:

Carissa Gerber said...

I love pastels. They are my favorite. Are they oil or chalk?

Sarah Harkey said...

Chalk :D I'm not a big fan of oil yet, I'm sure I'll like them better with time

Anonymous said...

that's great pastel artwork
But the sketches r marvellous ,,,
i love life sketch.....but i wanna ask >>why copyin from Tarazan ?

Sarah Harkey said...

Thanks so much :)

When I was being mentored, we would warm up by doing sketches off of work that we admired. Its a way of getting yourself to turn on your brain and to see how other artist approach the line and form of a character. Since I was working with a disney artist, we had tons and tons of reference from the archives and from published works-- and I'm a big fan of artists like Glen Keane, so one day I did some Tarzan copies.

It really did help me, I'd suggest giving it a try before your start working, and see if your work differs at all :)