It's been over a year since I last worked on some actual artwork that takes over a day to finish... so here it is! Except it's not finished artwork - just a study for a painting.

Model: my friend Jasna
Graphite and white pastel on 50x70cm toned paper. Took me around 6 and half hours over the course of a few days.
I'll begin working on a new acrylic painting tomorrow, and I decided to start with a detailed graphite study in actual size. I haven't done that before, I usually just make a loose sketch and gather references and try my best to do it right on canvas, but experience has shown I mess up proportions every time and it takes a ton of time to fix it. So now I've hopefully gotten things right on paper, so I can transfer it to canvas and speed up the painting process.
Not sure how the transferring is going to go though, I know how it works in theory, but I've never done it.
Update: Here is the finished painting!

A few days before I moved from my old apartment I was walking around my hood and found scattered leaves from the poor trees that were suffering from draught. Since I already had an idea of drawing plant elementals, I picked up some leaves and seeds for reference and drew this in my sketchbook:

Graphite pencil and watercolor in a Canson sketchbook. I plan to turn this into a digital painting so critique is very welcome.
Here are some steps from sketch to finish:

I managed to talk my boyfriend into posing for me again. This was the last drawing of the session, and the most successful one:

This one was the first. The torso is a bit too long and too narrow...

These two were a bit quicker.

I have to practice a lot more, but I'm OK with how this turned out.
Yesterday my boyfriend David and I went to the beach. When showed him something in my sketchbook, he snatched my pen and started to sketch himself :) so I took my other sketchbook and proceeded to paint.

Watercolor in a small Moleskine watercolor notebook
David's drawing was that of a similar view, accompanied by a interesting looking spaceship:

Next, I did a sketch of a guy lying nearby, and after that David took the sketchbook again and drew a graffiti sketch allegedly saying "Nela".

While he was drawing the graffiti, I was sketching him:

Sketching him is always a pain because he won't stand still. But at least I was happy to share the fun of sketching with him for once :)
Today we went to the nearby mountain Učka, and after that sat down for a drink in a tavern. There I sketched this:

Brush pen and watercolor in a cheap Lega-lega sketchbook.
Here are some of the sketches done in the past few days.

Details seen from my friend's veranda. Watercolor and ballpoint pen in a Lega-lega sketchbook.

My friends meditating. She didn't stand still too long so it's not very accurate. Watercolor pencil.


Nice statues near my office I did before work done in watercolor, and view from the office balcony I did during the lunch break, ballpoint pen and watercolor.



Quick sketches I did at my friend's house. Her brother's dog that wouldn't stand still for 2 seconds, and my friends.