Under Pressure

I had this idea while I was drifting off to sleep last night. This is sketched out while the kids were eating breakfast this morning. I'm calling it "Under Pressure" and it's a study for a mixed media piece I'm going to do. I used water soluble oil pastels over pencil. I have a couple of variations in mind--if any turn out, I'll try to post them.

Drawing Exercise

Many months ago I purchased Carla Sonheim's  Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists: 52 Creative Exercises to Make Drawing Fun.  It's filled with some excellent ideas for improving your drawing skills and useful if you need to get past a creative block.  It's organized as a series of exercises, many of them fairly short in duration.  I started one of the exercises when I purchased the book, but never got around to finishing it.  Today I went ahead and finished the painting/drawing because I wanted to use some new watercolor pencils I purchased last weekend.  Here is the result.  I like that the exercise freed up the movement in my drawing, as I have a tendency to draw animals in the same position.  What I don't like is that it's obviously off as far as perspective--part of the nature of the exercise, as I tried to stay as close to the watercolor washes as possible.