Details

“It starts with this: …”

JUN 20, 2020
| ssemchuk

“It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.” – Stephen King

June was another scattered and chaotic month and I didn’t even try to do anything intentional with my drawing beyond just showing up everyday and spending time at it. 

It was a month where I found my materials provided me some inspiration. On one of my trips out into the world (beyond work), I found a pack of pens on sale at Staples. When I picked them up, I had thought they were pigment pens, but later realized they were paint pens: Derwent Graphik Line Painters to be precise. The set I have is #2 – which includes 5 colours: ‘High’ (light blue), ‘Brilliant’ (dark blue) ‘Envy’ (green), ‘Clockwork’ (yellow) and ‘Bricklane’ (red). These pens are fine-tipped at .5mm, opaque and permanent once they dry, but while they are wet, they are water soluble. It’s not difficult to get them to spit out a bit of extra ink that you can use as a wash or splash across the page. I played with some of these techniques – not nearly as artfully as the people on YouTube, but it was interesting (June 6 – 8). The fact that they are fine makes it a bit tedious to fill large spaces, but I intend to pick them up again soon. 

I found myself drawing hands a few times in June and at the end of the month I resorted to graphite – which turned into my plan for my drawings in July, which I hope to post in the next couple of weeks. 

Thank you for checking out my work. 

“You have to learn to feel confident about the prospect of failing, because it’s so inevitable.” – Andrea Zittel

| ssemchuk

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

February 1, 2020
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February 29, 2020

It may be mid-April, but here are my February daily drawings. March was a very busy month and although I managed to draw or paint every day, I am only starting to get caught up now and I have a ways to go yet.
In February my theme was produce. I played around with quite a few different mediums and there are a few that I quite like and a lot that I have to chalk up to having tried – even if the results are mediocre. Everything counts and I just keep going.

 

 

“The whole culture is telling you to hurry, while the art tells you to take your time. Always listen to the art.” – Junot Diaz

| ssemchuk

August 6, 2019

My June daily drawings:

Jun 1, 2019
Jun 2, 2019
Jun 3, 2019
Jun 4, 2019
Jun 5, 2019
Jun 6, 2019
Jun 7, 2019
Jun 8, 2019
Jun 9, 2019
Jun 10, 2019
Jun 11, 2019
Jun 12, 2019
Jun 13, 2019
Jun 14, 2019
Jun 15, 2019
Jun 16, 2019
Jun 17, 2019
Jun 18, 2019
Jun 19, 2019
Jun 20, 2019
Jun 21, 2019
Jun 22, 2019
Jun 23, 2019
Jun 24, 2019
Jun 25, 2019
Jun 26, 2019
Jun 27, 2019
Jun 28, 2019
Jun 29, 2019
Jun 30, 2019

This is the third time in the last three years that I’ve spent a month drawing hands and this time around I decided to make sure my hands were always holding something. I chose five different media to use for six consecutive days each, starting with a black pigment pen and then moved to graphite. In these first drawings I was playing around with leaving some parts of the drawing less developed than other parts. Third up was Copic pigment liner with Koi Watercolour Brush Pens. For the last twelve days I worked with India ink and a brush – first on white paper, then on a grey ground for the last six drawings. I like to use the ink mixed with water, creating a series of washes that get darker as I proceed. I added a bit of white to a few of these as well.
Overall, I think the drawings went well and I really enjoyed creating them – even if some are kind of weird (like those odd fingers and the tiny pear on the 19th and the weird boneless hand on the 21st). For a little walk down memory lane, here are my 2018 hand drawings and my 2017 hand drawings. Next year I’ll have to come up with some new variation, but I will definitely return to this subject.

“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.” – Georgia O’Keeffe

| ssemchuk
June 3, 2019

May 1, 2019, living room
May 2, 2019, my kitchen
May 3, 2019, my kitchen
May 4, 2019, Sandman Hotel, Vancouver, BC
May 5, 2019, Granville Island Public Market, Vancouver, BC
May 6, 2019, Sandman Hotel, Vancouver, BC.
May 7, 2019, Metrotown Mall, Burnaby, BC
May 8, 2019, Vancouver International Airport, Vancouver, BC
May 9, 2019, living room
May 10, 2019, Starbucks parking lot
May 11, 2019, The Italian Centre Cafe
May 12, 2019, Starbucks
May 13, 2019, Meadows Rec Centre
May 14, 2019, Community Centre, Sherwood Park, AB
May 15, 2019, My living room.
May 16, 2019, Front yard
May 17, 2019, Basement rec room
May 18, 2019, Starbucks / Indigo, Sherwood Park, AB
May 19, 2019, Southgate Mall, Edmonton, AB
May 20, 2019, under the Campbell Bridge, Edmonton, AB
May 21, 2019, my backyard
May 22, 2019, my front yard
May 23, 2019. End of my driveway after my morning run.
May 24, 2019, Southgate Mall, Edmonton, AB
May 25, 2019, Mill Woods Public Library, Edmonton, AB
May 26, 2019, Starbucks
May 27, 2019, Meadows Public Library, Edmonton, AB
May 28, 2019, front yard
May 29, 2019, my street
May 30, 2019, Community Centre, Sherwood Park, AB
May 31, 2019, Community Centre, Sherwood Park, AB

For the month of May, rather than have a theme to guide the subject matter of my drawings, I chose to relocate where I did my drawing. I’m fortunate to have a studio – a small room where my art supplies live and where I can go to draw and paint and control the lighting with everything I need at my fingertips – it’s all very comfortable and lovely and a situation crying out for a shake-up. The only requirement I set out was that I draw outside of my comfy and safe nest studio – and as a result, outside of my comfort zone.
This was an eye-opening experience for me. A simple change in location led me places I had not considered before in more than a literal sense. There were days where I simply picked another room of the house to draw in and I drew what I saw and even that seemed new. I managed to draw on location quite a lot and realized I would like to try more urban sketching and take the time to develop the skills I’m currently lacking in drawing buildings and other architectural elements. I found that there is some pretty cool looking public furniture at malls and in other public spaces and I may have to make that a theme at some point.
I pushed myself out of my comfort zone quite a lot this past month and I really enjoyed it. This has made me excited about drawing again and I feel like there is just so much out there that I want to capture in my sketchbook. There were a lot of days where I sat down and looked at what I wanted to draw and felt the fear of knowing that I might completely make a mess of it and I did it anyway. Some of the drawings are pretty mediocre, and that’s the thing; it really isn’t about how well they turned out, it’s about the process and the experience. Fortunately, the positive experiences far outweighed the less than successful ‘experiments’ and have left me with a head full of ideas to carry on in my daily drawing practice.

“Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a Shepard. Without innovation, it is a corpse.” – Winston Churchill

| ssemchuk

May 13, 2019

Apr 1, 2019
Apr 2, 2019
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Apr 21a, 2019
Apr 21b, 2019
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Apr 25, 2019
Apr 26, 2019
Apr 27, 2019
Apr 28, 2019
Apr 29, 2019
Apr 30, 2019

In April, I decided to redraw items that I had drawn in 2016 or early 2017. I had thought that perhaps I would be able to make some dramatic comparisons. That wasn’t really the case though. I am posting only the current drawings here, but each day I posted the current drawing on Instagram with the original. It may not have turned out as I had expected, but it did give me a break from coming up with ideas of what to draw for the month.

In each drawing I added a bit of colour (even if it was grey) with watercolour. I used either my Winsor & Newton travel box of watercolours or my Peerless Transparent Watercolors. I enjoyed the challenge and the opportunity to learn something new. The two sets produce quite different results and I have a lot to learn about both yet.

“Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.” – Henry Miller

| ssemchuk

April 1, 2019

 

My drawing theme for March was plants and flowers. I had thought that this subject matter would be a good opportunity to use coloured media and I envisioned pretty little watercolours and coloured pencil drawings capturing delicate colour transitions. It was a busy month for me though, and not only were the drawings not turning out as I had hoped, I was frequently pressed for time.

So I switched to Sharpie and pigment pens and started playing with line thickness and quality of line. Sharpie is not a medium conducive to a slow or faltering line and I quickly chose to sacrifice accuracy as a result. This changed the experience of drawing considerably and I really enjoyed it. Instead of placing my lines carefully and erasing and correcting, I had to commit and when my lines were clearly wrong, I had to work with it to make the drawing work independently of the subject in front of me.

While drawing I spent more time looking at my subject than at the paper and I believe my accuracy improved over time. I’m pleased that these drawings have left me with a new approach/style that I can adopt when I want to do something different. I will come back to this and work on evolving it further down the road.

“I know there is a terrific idea there somewhere…”

| ssemchuk

March 12, 2019

“I know there is a terrific idea there somewhere, but whenever I want to get into it, I get a feeling of apathy and want to lie down and go to sleep.” – Willem De Kooning

 

Feb 1, 2019
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Feb 23, 2019 A
Feb 23, 2019 B
Feb 24, 2019
Feb 25, 2019
Feb 26, 2019
Feb 27, 2019
Feb 28, 2019

I really enjoyed my drawings this month – there was a good balance between the challenge of each one and my interest in the subject matter. I’m sure I will be coming back to this subject matter again.  The shapes of the negative space and the legs provide such a great opportunity to forget what this thing you’re looking at is and just focus on where to put the next line. For the most part, I worked from photos. I had set out to draw all of the chairs in my house and I did get to most of them – except for the four different office chairs that were just bland to me. And there are just so many beautifully designed chairs out there that it would have been such a loss to stick to the ones in my immediate surroundings. I am now finding myself noticing (and photographing) chairs much more as I am out – at restaurants and in the mall. I am slowly building a collection of new chairs to do this all over again down the road with new fodder.

Part of my inspiration for this subject matter comes from the work of Lucia Dill and her paintings of folding chairs. I love everything about these paintings and the narratives she builds into them.

And now it’s spring and I’m working on more drawings to post here next month.

“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity…..”

| ssemchuk

February 17, 2019

“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.” – Ray Bradbury

Jan 1, 2019
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Jan 29, 2019
Jan 30, 2019
Jan 31, 2019

This is my third year drawing every day. Having finished my first month, I took a bit of time last weekend to compare my drawings from January 2017 and January 2018 beside my January 2019 work. I had hoped to see huge advances in terms of the quality of my drawings – and I do see improvement, but not what I had hoped for. I found a lot of my drawings this past month a bit frustrating. Considering the shapes of the subject matter I was drawing (produce) consists of organic, often roundish shapes, I had thought I could do better to convey volume. It is what it is though. And I did experiment some with mediums which explains the less than stellar results of the drawings for Jan 14 and Jan 24. And there are some that I really like – Jan 9 and Jan 16. I am still going on this project and with a new theme for February I am looking forward to seeing the results.

“Canada is the only country in the world that knows how to live without an identity.” – Marshall McLuhan

| ssemchuk

January 28, 2019

 

Aug 27, 2018
Aug 27, 2018
Sep 6, 2018
Sep 25, 2018
Sep 29, 2018
Oct 2, 2018
Oct 14, 2018
Oct 26, 2018
Oct 27, 2018
Oct 28, 2018
Oct 29, 2018
Oct 30, 2018
Nov 8, 2018
Nov 9, 2018

These are a few drawings from my daily sketchbook from August through November. Somehow I’m able to play a little more when I’m drawing in my sketchbook and sometimes wonder if maybe I should just dispense with using the cut paper and just draw here – I may prefer the results. But I don’t want to be restricted to the same paper every day. It’s the looseness and the textures that I like the most in these particular drawings – I am still working on accomplishing that more frequently. And so I continue on.