Hello and welcome to this week's drawing challenge. I am your host. If you would like assistance or advice, please ask for it and I will be more than willing to try to guide you.

What's a "drawing challenge?" Simple! You pick one of the photos below, and draw it. Then you post your drawing here. Lather, rinse, repeat!

All levels of drawing are encouraged to participate!

The goal of this thread is to enable and encourage individuals to practice their drawing skills, learn new techniques and have fun! If you just want to sketch that's fine. If you want to create a complex, detailed drawing, that's great too. You will get out of this what you want. The references used are from my own personal reference library of images that I have photographed and I release them here as not under copyright, meaning you can use them as you wish for drawing. The images will be posted in the Inspirational Gallery for free use after they are posted in this thread.

You will be challenged by some aspect of all references most likely as you all will have different strengths and weaknesses in your ability to translate the images to paper.

Reminder:

This is a DRAWING challenge. Therefore please confine your artistic endeavours to some form of drawing: graphite, coloured pencil, pen and ink or charcoal.

There is no ruling on what size your final drawing or sketch should be. Smaller, sketchbook sizes will provide a smaller file size which is easier for loading onto the thread.

This challenge will last for one week. You can post your drawings any time.

I have offered five reference images to choose from. The images are also provided in greyscale. Seeing the images in black and white gives a better sense of basic values. It can easily be done in most graphic manipulation programs such as Adobe Photoshop and others.

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This flower is from Brookside Gardens, a botanical garden here in Maryland.

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My Dad carved this pumpkin for us last halloween. If you draw it I will send him a copy!

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I saw these flamingos during our "safari" at Disney's Animal Kingdom.

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These gorilla skulls are also at the Animal Kingdom.

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I saw this woman at the Animal Kingdom. It's not the best photograph but there's something about it I really like. The positions of her hands and her facial expression just work together to create a sense of tension and movement.

Happy drawing, everyone!

Great pics, Ernest!! Love your dad's pumpkin...and the skulls. They are all great.
What to draw? What to draw?

I love the Jack-O'Lantern!!

Fantastic selection this week Ernest......I hope to try one.

I love them all, but I think I'l try the pumpkin it's lovely. Hey Ernest now I know where you got your artistic vain, from your dad!!
kaly

As promised here's my pumpkin. Not as easy to draw as it first seams
Kaly

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Cool pumpkin, Kaly! My Dad is going to love it.

I don't know about me, but my Dad and my Mom both are very artistically talented. My Dad has been carving in wood for nearly 40 years, and he wins ribbons at exhibitions all the time. My Mom sews beautiful dolls and doll clothes.

:3 I think my flower turned out well

Great job! One cool thing about these challenges is seeing how different people interpret the pictures. I like the way you've contrasted the softness of the flowers and the hard bricks; I wouldn't have thought to bring out this aspect of the photo myself.

That is a fantastic pumpkin Kaly!

and love your flower Sarah!

Okay so here is my quick drawing of the Gorilla skull..........Oppps.....sorry wrong challenge... but I hope to try the real one

Lol

Thanks Ernest
I can imagine how fantastic it must have been to grow up with your parents, always something new to create!

LOL Brian you are something lovely Gorila He looks like a gorila clown LOL

Feint, your flower is lovely

Love Kaly

great pictures you guys .. I tried the women . I too like something about her looks maybe its the hair she seems confident ...I think short hair on a girl shows confidence in her style ..and a women with confidence no matter what size or what color just seems beautiful to me .

Great job, Kim!

Brian, is that Magilla Gorilla?

Great jobs so far everyone! Very motivational photos this week Ernest!

Ernest...please tell your father his carving is exceptional and that I'm sorry, but I really couldn't help it

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Maire

He will love it. His woodcarvings range from serious religious statuary to (as you seem to have guessed!) some really amazing Ozark-style cowboy charicatures. He was clearly thinking of those when he carved this pumpkin. I'll try to come up with some pictures.

Great drawing Kimbo!

Maire.... naturally I love this one.


Yes Ernest...good ol Magilla.....another great creation by Hanna-Barbera came out when I was only 3 years old.

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Nice shading on this!

Everyone has done such a wonderful job on the drawings.
I tried a quick sketch of the birds. I have a weakness for long legged creatures. You know, like flamingos, cranes, giraffes, men..

Hi to all this week's participants I enjoyed all your entries and got a good laugh out of Magilla and Maire's pumpkin guy.

I went for the male gorilla skull. Doing both would have taken longer than I had to spend on this week's challenge.
I spent around 5 hours on this drawing. I liked the shading challenge of this picture.
I used 2mm clutch pencils with 2B, 6B, F and 4H graphite on A4 size 160 gsm inkjet printer paper.

Thanks for hosting Ernest!

Great job RJ! Did you sketch this out by eye or use a projector to get your reference lines. You have found the magic of achieving the darks.. care to give up your secrets? Love the detail, wood grain looks to have been a pain, especialy as the perspective chages on the far left background.
AH!! THAT IS WHY this drawing stands out and grabs me!!!! You put in the background and forground!!
Very well done!

Gorgeous, RJ!

There are actually three skulls in the complete display: two gorillas and a human. I had my son stand next to the human skull, and took a photo of the four heads in a line! But this photo, snapped in natural light, looked the best for drawing.

Thanks Ernest, Brian and RJ.

Yobanezlo- Very nice work on the pumpkin . RJ - great skull. Cyn - nice sketch with lovely long legs (can't help you gathering those men though )

That flower photo was so enticing I had to do it even though I have never done a flower that I was satisfied with. However, I learned a lot by trying. First, never freehand a sketch for colored pencils on the good paper (instead do it on scratch paper and transfer - although I have not yet mastered a transfer to black paper.) The result here is that the incorrect proportions started showing up in due course. I will probably try it again at another time, but in the meantime .........

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Maire

Well, that's what's so lovely about flowers, isn't it -- they are never insulted if you don't get their likeness just right! These are beautiful, by the way!

Hi Douglas,

No I don't use a projector. I use a grid method without the grid. I place the photo in a computer program that uses rulers. I then map out the key points like center of an eye, outside edge or any other significant reference. Once I have that I can more easily measure the other elements. Once I'm happy with the detail of the line drawing I start to sculpt the drawing. The advantage here is that it is very easy to scale the drawing to a larger size like I did with my Chaplin drawing.

If your interested, you can follow a few WIPs on my website to get more detail and read about the techniques I use.

This particular drawing is between a sketch and a complete work. Most completed drawings take me around 20 hours. In that case this drawing is only 25% done.

By the way. I very much like your charcoal drawings.

Thanks RJ! I will take a look at your website for details on the transfer method.

As to the charcoal drawings, thank you very much for the compliment! I just layed down the reference lines for the next charcoal I will start tonight. Hope my luck does not falter, I have been haveing fun with this medium!

Hey welcome back Cyn .. I have not seen you for awhile I know you had to take a break .. I hope all is much better

Hi hon.. and thank you . Life is still so busy that it goes by at the speed of sound. (of course the sound is probably me screaming. ) Everyone is still hurt, sick or old and I am still running on the grace of God. Sometimes you just have to squeeze in a drawing to keep your sanity. But as they say, "this too shall pass". And on the up side, I never have time to get bored..

HB and 3B on printer paper. About 2 hours

Great! Hey, where'd that knife come from?

Nice job Lance

Cyn by the grace of GOD were all here keep smiling hun .