Monday, October 12, 2020

Elvis and Marilyn were NOT in the building

 Boy! It's been a very long time since I've posted anything on blogger. 

It has also been a long time since I've had any artwork to share on here. But with COVID and the slowdown that it has caused, I have picked up my pencil and started to draw again. 

My niece is an avid collector of anything Elvis Presley, and I do mean anything. She just recently celebrated her 6th wedding anniversary, but I can remember the distress my Sister-in-law had trying to outfit her daughter for the wedding months before the event was to take place. 

  • Something Old - Check
  • Something New - Check
  • Something Borrowed - Check
  • Something Blue. OMG-Where-The-Heck-Am-I-Going-To-Find (and you guessed it) Blue Suede Shoes
With only hours to spare, my sister-law managed to pull off a miracle, and yes this is really my niece's wedding photo and they really are Blue Suede High-heeled Shoes 👍


This year, just before the lockdown over COVID, my wife visited the family up in Grande Prairie. She stayed with our niece while she was up there. When she came back to Quesnel, the lockdown started full force. My niece had mentioned to Lola that she would love to have a drawing that I made. 

Her birthday was just a couple of months away, so I thought I might try my hand at a portrait for her. A portrait of who was the question. Should I find an old family picture and draw her? Should I draw something from her wedding photos? Should I even attempt a portrait? 

What would she like?

What does she like?

Well, I know of two things - Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. 

But she has every collectible imaginable for both Elvis and Marilyn....
Well....
Except!!!...
Original Sirianni *masterpiece* hand drawn portraits in pencil of both Elvis and Marilyn 
(drawn from photos of course for it's not like they were in the building ) 😀

Portrait of Elvis Pencil on Paper 11" x 14"



Portrait of Marilyn Monroe Pencil, Pencil Crayon on Paper 11" x 14"



The portraits have been gifted to my niece and she has given them a place of prominence above all other Presley and Monroe memorabilia. 


Thanks for stopping by, 
Frank Sirianni aka Foxxfyrre
TTFN



Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Adult Colouring Pages Free to Download

Adult Colouring Pages

Adult colouring books are becoming more popular, and as their popularity grows so does the price tag. I just went and bought one for my wife and the price was well over $30 CAD. That's pretty steep as far as I'm concerned. 

I bought it because I was hearing all the benefits of colouring for relaxation, mindfulness, and the like. I like to draw, and I am well aware of the benefits of drawing, but whether the benefits of drawing are similar in colouring I won't say for sure. You may want to read the article "Are You Having a Relationship with an Adult Coloring Book" in Psychology Today to gain further insight on the subject. 

After paying the steep price for an adult colouring book, I thought I would search the web to find anything on the subject, and possible free to download colouring pages. And, well, there is tons of stuff out there. Two sites that I found are quite good and have lots of pages that you can download for free. Davidrd Collection, and TheGraphicsFairy are the sites that I got these free pages below. 

Just click on the image and download











Thursday, December 17, 2015

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Updating as I go

I'm currently going through this blog and updating some old posts. The pictures in this post were originally posted July 27, 2006, but everything else is an update.

When I first started drawing, after I filled a couple of sketchbooks, I wanted to save some of my art on computer so I wouldn't destroy or lose it. I decided this after a drawing session in a coffee shop and I spilled coffee on what I was drawing. It wasn't a disaster, for it was just a little bit of coffee and didn't soak through the sketchbook. But it was enough to start scanning and saving my art on the computer.

Shortly after, I was surfing around for a better software program to work with my scans and I found Picassa. I loaded everything into Picassa that I had scanned. I really liked Picassa, but I kept noticing a large letter B with Blog This beside it. My first thought was BLOG YOU! It was early 2005, so I wasn't up on what a blog really was, but curiosity got me and finally, in May of 2006 I "Blogged That!" And the first post of Foxxfyrre's Black and White Art was up.

I first thought--once I figured out how to use a blog--that I'd post some of my art and maybe get some feedback on my drawing. It took a while, but I did get responses and as time grew, I made many friends because of this blog. The blog strayed a bit from just posting my art, for it went in a few different directions, but those directions still had something to do with art.

Then life got busy, again! And blogging and drawing and anything fun, went on the back burner. I shouldn't have to mention that no-time-for-blogging-equals-blog-death. Recently, I've decided that I would pull this baby out of blogatory (that's blogspeak for blog + purgatory), grab some Pledge and give her a good dusting by going through posts that have my drawings in them and update them or repost.

One of the reasons I am doing this is that I love drawing. I started to draw at 37 years of age and I am mostly self taught. I had a friend and co-worker who is an artist that got me started, but after that I was on my own. So now, I want to re-purpose the blog in an effort to help people get started in drawing. I believe that there is a lot of people out there that would like to draw, but they think that they have no talent, or think that they can't draw. Everything that I have learned in tutorials in books and around the web is that anyone can draw and it doesn't solely rely on talent. I believe those books are right. Before I sat down over a coffee with that artist friend, I thought I couldn't draw anything. I never attempted to prior to that time--not even in school, but that's another story.

I won't be posting tutorials--since I'm not a professional artist or teacher, but I will post my finished drawings that were done through tutorials from books I've used or sites on the net. I will even post some real early work to show how my art has evolved using these resources. If you check my Art Resources page, all of the resources I've used are available from that page. I'll be continually searching for more resources and work through them. If they seem to me to be helpful, I'll definitely add them to the Resource page.

The following drawings were done from exercises from Dr. Betty Edwards book, "The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, 3rd Edition." This book is one of my favourite texts and changed the way I draw and approach drawing. It was also the first book on drawing that I purchased to continue learning.

Portrait Exercise

11x14
Pencil on paper
This was drawn from and exercise in Dr. Edward's Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. 
The exercise involves taking the subject you want to draw and turn it upside down the draw what you see. This was the my first attempt at drawing upside down, but it really is a cool way to draw. The purpose is to stop your logical left-brain from over analysing what you are trying to draw. In other-words,  when the subject is upside down and you are focussing on your drawing, your left brain isn't going 'that's a finger' or that's a shoelace. 

Chair Exercise

11x14
Pencil on paper
This was drawn using negative space. Negative space is basically the shapes that an object makes that aren't part of the object. If you look at the drawing above, my starting point was the small triangle that the front and back legs form just underneath the seat. 
This was also drawn from an exercise in Dr. Edwards book.

Composite Skill drawing

11x14
pencil on paper
This was drawn using both principles of drawing upside down and using negative space. 


That's it for this one,
Thanks for stopping in,
Franks Sirianni aka Foxxfyrre
TTFN

You can find Dr, Edwards book in my Art Resources page above or by the Amazon link below.



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