More sketching, new subjects, new paints

I don't know about your house, but in mine we have 3 copies of the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. I had never opened it until a few weeks ago and now I am slowly going through it. It's the drawing course I never took! I especially had fun with the upside-down drawing exercises. I copied an Old Master Dutch drawing from my book The Age of Breugel and a sweet Van Gogh drawing from Vincent Van Gogh: The Drawings. Having worked in museums many years ago means that I have no limit of art books from which to draw inspiration. (No pun intended.)

I haven't read the chapter on drawing faces yet, but made this drawing of my father from an old (1970s) photo. Maybe I'll try it again after I've read the chapter!

I drew this on a car ride up to my parent's house where we were headed to stay for a few days since we lost power during a snow storm. While there, I found an old photo of my grandparents and decided to try out my new gouache paints.

A pretty dapper couple! I left the paintings there as a surprise for my parents. As my first experiment with painting people and using gouache, I'm pretty happy with the results but clearly I need to practice with both the paints and the subject matter!