I do not claim to be an artist, I just love to draw…
My Aunt is a great artist with a gallery in Las Vegas… I have inherited some of her talents evidently … One thing she taught me, art is supposed to be fun and relaxing. And who cares of some tracing is involved, I do it myself… the artist still has to do all the shading, textures, colors etc etc.
One of my favorite tools is a plug in lite bright looking drawing pad… simply put the photo you want to draw down, blank paper atop and turn on the light… I trace just the outline of things and freehand the remainder…
Currently I am trying to draw this for my wife… this is her Grandparents place that has since been torn down by a family member who bought the land after their passing. I was lucky enough to spend a few visits here with 2 people who define Salt of the Earth…
And Taco the Kitty for my good friend Argo, my first paying customer when I made his company Logos he still runs today… guy asked for old school so he got it. this was not traced but freehanded as I can do it when I need to… haha.
Hell yes man, thanks for sharing these!
That photo would look so cool in pen and watercolor. Gotta be clean with that though, not a big color palette to work with!
Digging the art, not to good an artist, but an artist of music been plays guitar 45+ years and am quite accomplished now. Was self taught by ear, but did learn all the technical stuff later in life.
I tried that damn thing, what’s it called, a Guitar… lol. because of my 4 back surgeries I couldn’t even hold it correctly or get into a position where I could play for more then a few minutes without it killing me physically. To bad too because my wife’s dad was accomplished and part of the James Gang Band… played 12 string too, tried to teach me as none of his 4 sons cared to learn… unreal huh? wish my Dad would of wanted to do anything with me… ha
My dad only taught me to shoot and kill. He was an Air Force fight pilot that was in Vietnam. I think he really missed that place after 5 tours and they told him go home no #6 for him and he left the military shortly after that one.
Wow… I just met a guy who was a tunnel rat over in Nam… mad respect and 3 tours… but 5. I heard of guys like that, many returned out of the guilt of leaving their fellow soldiers who were unprepared alone in the jungle knowing what he knew could save lives… or, he just liked killing gooks. sorry, but that was the term.
Sorry this is a big dump lmao but I’ve loved art my whole life and it was actually a big part of my life, when I was 14 a friend and I used to hang around a pretty important tattoo shop over here in Hawai’i and they took us in as “apprentices” and helped shape our art styles and discover what we had in us. I ended up giving that up to focus up on sports again and I played a sport if not two every season of the yeah wether it was football, judo, wrestling, track&field, basketball etc and I never really let myself get into art until my junior year when I started a graffiti club at my school and we ended up being apprentices to older artists through a program called 808Urban and we would get to work on community mural projects and were involved with our local Pow!Wow! Hawai’i graffiti project but then college started and I tried to do football again and it never worked out. Since then I haven’t really done more than small projects and sketching but I’ve always wanted to launch a clothing brand etc.
Maybe next time I go home I’ll try to scrounge up one of my sketch books. All my stuff is abstract as I can’t draw anything real. I did manage to do three incredible (incredible for me, not anyone with any talent) paintings over the years. All in all, not a lot of artistic talent from me
I’ll get bored working on one and switch to a different drawing for a while…
Most of mine are gifts, my wife says I have a problem giving everything away…
but I choose to make others happy as I find my own happiness and joy seeing them smile…
My favorite drawing was for a young lady named Mary who lost her kitty to eye cancer. and her being an artist, I knew it had to be good so I worked on it hard.
Cat’s are much harder to draw correctly then dogs… the fine hairs show so many colors up close that trying to catch them all is the challenge…
RIP Goober the kitty
Thank you! The shop I apprenticed at actually specialized in traditional Samoan and Tongan tatau but also developed what is now called the Neo-Polynesian style.
Passion is what drives the artist in all of us and I see passion in your drawings the the drive for perfection stands out. Every time we pick up that brush, pen, drum stick, guitar, clay or even legos. We are in a zone to achieve a happiness that only few can find in there craft it is an inter peace that only can be felt for that love of our craft.
I built light box for tracing portraits, but it’s restrictive to the size of the original pic, over head projectors work well for expanding picture size, mostly now for speed, I print off the pic and create a stencil for an outline when airbrushing, and then free hand in everything else like you do, but if time is not an issue I like to sketch it out free hand, practice gets you there in the end and then you have no limitations. I have only done one doggy portrait which came out pretty good, fur takes a lot of practice to get it looking realistic.
There is a saying, Art is just a series of corrections, until there is nothing left to correct
Nice work, I digitized your pics for Argo so he could make stickers of them for people, I hope he is doing well, not seen him here for a while now.
Hey Shadey… very nice to meet you. So your the guy who made them stickers I have eh? He wanted old school everything, even the lettering…
Argo is doing great… we talk from time to time, usually when he calls me late at night buzzed… haha. Since he switched from working in the warehouse to driving the truck/deliveries he’s a different kind of busy. Still baking and stuff, and atm is working my Gabagoo into seeds for me… He’s been running her the longest now and says people ask for her.
Free hand is how I got started back doodling and then mastered a few pieces I could draw anytime. I’ve done illustrations for children’s bible books that paid almost nothing, but the reward I got from it emotionally was payment enough.
Always wanted to go to school, so now I get extra training watching you tube video’s… can learn a lot for free…
Water colors just blows me away what these trained people can do… my biggest challenge today, drawing all this while sitting in a recliner because my desk is cluttered with wife’s garbage… no kitchen table, just island cab… I want a nice flat art table…
Working on my Step Mom’s dog right now… then my Dad wants a 3 dog collage for Christmas I may attempt to do in Acrylics… like you said, getting the hair to come out correctly is difficult not to mention time consuming as heck.
Favorite is still colored pencils and I’m going to start collecting more like pastels, 72 colors, etc…
I watch a lot of YouTube videos if I am wanting to try different techniques. I don’t do water colors it’s too loose a style for me. Acrylics is good the colors are bolder.
Fur is much easier on synthetic paper as you can scratch and erase easily, but never tried using with paint brushes, just my airbrushes. You get much finer layers which makes life easier for blending colors and shading.
This is my daughter’s boyfriends doggy, on canvas with acrylics and airbrush.
If you want to check out more of my stuff, I do start to finish progress shots. Just search, A Shadey spot to paint.
