Hi Everyone!
My name is Chris and I am hosting this weeks drawing challenge. This is the first time that I am hosting a challenge so I hope you all like my challenge pictures and hope you all have fun!

Sunday is my son's (Gabe) 9th birthday so I had to include his photo and it was only fair to include my daughter's (Ava) as well.

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.

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 endeavors to some form of drawing: graphite, colored 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.

If you would like assistance or advice, please ask for it and I will be more than willing to try to guide you.

This challenge will last for one week. At that time, all challenge drawings should be submitted to this thread.

I have offered 6 reference images, photographed during my vacation in Portugal, to choose from. The images are also provided in greyscale. Seeing the images in black and white gives a better sense of basic values.

I have kept the images to simple shapes that still provide challenges. Block out your basic shapes first then work the details into them, rechecking proportion and measurement against other reference points in your drawing.



If you have an interest in hosting a challenge, please see the list in the pinned area of general discussions.
On your mark...get set...GO!

A few of the photos are out of their order, I'm sorry about that

Chris, your reference pictures are gorgeous!!
Great challenge you got here!

Cheeres,
Sonia.

Thank you! I had a hard time choosing which ones so I just put up a bunch

~Chris

your daughter has a amazing smile .. my daughters smile so much like yours .

Stunning and beautiful pictures, I hope to try one.


Brian.

Holy Mackerel! Chris, you sure don't make it easy to pick which to draw this week, your pictures are superb! I am still finishing last week's challenge, but I will have to have a go at one or two of these, for sure!

I went to your profile and seen your I believe ....I have that tattooed on my fore-arm from the inside of my elbow to the inside of my wrist ...something I have never regretted to do .

anyways here are your two childeren ..I tried to do the best I could on your son but the pic was kinda dark .. and your daughter looks washed out due to my printer .. it picked up all the light in her face . she I must say is a beautiful little girl ...and I think the boy has a slightly grown out mow-hawk ? so I tried to draw that in .

Wow Kim! That is amazing, and it took my breath away when I clicked on it. It would take me a month to do what you did and it would not look half as good.

Thank you for all of the complements to my kids ( Gabe and Ava, I forgot to include their names~ lol)

~Chris

I thought the one of the lake would be challenging and fun because of the reflection, and Gabe at the lake because of the contrast of the light background and the darkness of Gabe's profile. (this is where I grew up...as you can see it was an amazing place to grow up and now that I have my own kids and I'm about 5 minutes from there I get to watch my kids doing the same thing I did...it brings back great memories)

Now Ava's I chose because it shows such innocence, I have tried to draw it and I just can't seem to get it right so I am so excited to see if anyone chooses this one.I love the one with the flowers with my house in the background, I don't know what type of flower it is but it popped up around Easter and I couldn't help myself to take a picture from an angle looking up. I love the detail that came out of the veins in the flower.

The irises I love first because I think they are beautiful and more importantly because they have been handed down 3 generations from my Grandmother to my Mother and now to me.The Australian Sheppard is my sisters dog that she rescued from being put to sleep because of a broken leg which has healed perfectly, he is a gorgeous dog and I love the pachysandra in the background.

I hope that's not too much info on my photos but I myself love to hear the story of other peoples photos.

Well anyway have fun everybody and thank you for the compliments on my photos.

Here is my attempt of Gabe, this was one of my first portraits and looking at it now I can pick out my mistakes. I still cannot get hair down and it is so frustrating and where's his neck that's what I want to know! LOL

Kim~
Every time I look at your portrait that you did of Gabe I am truly amazed. This might be a silly question but did you use colored pencils and if so which ones do you use. I have not tried colored pencils and I would love to give it a whirl.

I use prisma colored pencil the two took me about two hours ...I have been using prisma for years ...people are my most favorite subjects to draw ..I sent you a pm .

I tried your son's profile. As an experiment, I just did it with a Sienna Brown coloured pencil on cartridge paper - about 7" square.

very beautiful pictures, chris.
Happy birthday to your son, your mighty leo ; here is your daughter in graphite and crayola crayons on sketchbook 6x8in.40 minutes.

I wanted to do your daughter as well ..its always fun showing the kids all the drawings people do of them .

Holy Moly Kim!

You are amazing, I can't wait to get them and I love your special touch to Ava's picture, the flowers and butterfly are beautiful.

I love being a host, it's so awesome to click on here and see your photos drawn as portraits.

Great work Elena!!!! She looks beautiful, I hope you had fun drawing Ava. I also love that you use crayola, I love crayons as well. I just got the new ones that have no paper and age long rectangles all sides have sharp edges, if you haven't tried them you will love them!

Hi mumwond... Great job, I love it.
Thank you for taking on the challenge and feel free to do more.

I have made up some cards of her as well .. they totaly turned out beautiful and I think she will enjoy them .

thanks for the challenge it has been fun .

Hi, chris. thank you for the challenge. I enjoyed doing my crayon sketch but I must admit after seeing what a wonderful job Kim did to your girl I regret for not taking more time and good colored pencils for capturing the grace of this pose.
Bravo Kim, you really rendered the charm this picture is all about.The face, hair, smile, flower and butterfly are all in harmony.I like when people create from a reference more than they see. It's so inspiring for all of us to really pay attention at the secret message of a photo.

you couldnt go wrong with such beautiful photographs let alone the kids are soo darn cute

Oh, my Gosh!! Wow, Such gorgeous works on this challenge!!
Congratulations ladies! You are definitely very inspired!!
Chris, you got beautiful children!! Like angels!

Hugs,
Sonia.

Thank you Sonia. They are little angles for the most part, lol. Gabe and Ava are 11 months apart so they are very close to each other just like twins are.

I am loving this challenge hosting, it is so exciting to see what gets posted next.
Thank you all again

Very beautiful pictures!!!



Here's my try.

Click to view attachment


I'm not good with portraits


I used pencil, on paper.
It took me about 2 hours.

Hi Di.N.A
Your portrait is wonderful, great job! I love how you subtly sketched in the backrgound. Thank you.
~Chris

Hi Chris,
Thank you for hosting this week.
Your photos are great!
Have fun!

I had to try to draw this happy looking dog in his sea of greenery. I used various coloured pencils and it measures about 9 x6 ins

nice job .. I love the whiskers

You have a real talent for dogs! Well done Norma.

These are stunning photos!! Wow.

thank you! I chose all of my favorites... well most of them

Wow, great job, if you don't mind I would like to forward this on to my sister, this is her dog. I call him reef because he is an Australian Shepard.

Again... great job, I was hoping that someone would try him.

Thank you Paulette, I am loving this and I will sign up for future challenges!

Hi all,

I admire all the portraits very much,

Kim you sure work wonders with those color pencils of yours, and what fantastic drawings from our host, Di.N.A, Mumwond and Elena.

Mumwond you inspired me to try a quick drawing of the beautiful dog, I admire your talents,

thanks for the challenge Chris.

Brian.

Great job Brian! I love all of the drawings of my sisters dog. I have never attempted an animal but someday I will.

Again... wonderful drawing

Brian too cute hun

Hi Steve.

I was hoping that you would give one a shot, in particular the one of the lake From your drawings that I have seen in other challenges I thought that you would be able to do an amazing drawing of that one.

I hope you give it a go.

thank you Brian! I needed that smile today..the little guy does seem to have his hands full..great job!

Funny you should say that! I have started this very picture! But I have been too busy to concentrate on it! I will get to it, I have a very basic sketch,

Click to view attachment

I am considering doing this as quite an abstract painting! It's too complicated for a detailed study!. We'll see!

Hi Steve,
I am so excited to see your drawing of the lake, I thought of you when I chose it because I always love your landscape pieces.

Thank you again for working on this one
~ Chris

Very difficult subject, and not what I would normally tackle!

Click to view attachment

Still very amazing!

Steve,
Thus, it is called a "challenge", which by the way, I think you did extremely well. You make it appear effortless, but I know how vexing watercolors can be. Great job, big guy!
Best wishes,
Trish

Kim,

The drawing of Ava is simply beautiful. I like the way you kept it light and airy.

maemay

WOW!
That is beautiful, you are an amazing artist. I cannot wait to show my Mom and Dad.

Thank you again for painting the lake.
~Chris

Hi Everyone!

I just want to take a few seconds and thank all of you who participated in this drawspace challenge. I had so much fun and I hope you all did as well.

I feel honored to have such amazing artists step into my world and take the time to draw the things that mean the most to me.

Again.... Thank you.


This is my #1 favorite photo of my kids. I was going to use this one but I did not want to just use photos of my kids. ( I have tried it and it is definitely challenging) I would love it if anyone wanted to tackle it, I gave up on mine.

Click to view attachment

Which one is the artist?

Last-minute addition here - this is charcoal on canson paper, A4 size, about an hour.

Click to view attachment

I read what Gabe and the rest of your family are doing raising money for cancer research. He's a very impressive little fellow, with a big heart. You should be very proud of him indeed.


Dave

We are very proud of Gabe, and yes, he does has a very big heart. He has raised $5,000.00 within the last year. To us he is nothing short of amazing.

That is a great portrait of Gabe, I love it!
Thank you for visiting Gabe's website.

Hi Steve,
My daughter loves to draw, well actually they both do! (which makes me so happy!) I save all of their scribbles and anything they draw. My husband thinks I am crazy but he'll see that 20 years down the road he'll look at them and thank me for saving them.

My son actually has done some pretty cool drawings, I'll take a picture and put it up, he has been doing these designs for a while and they're pretty cool.

My daughter was chosen to draw the cover of the program for her First Grade concert, we we're so excited and proud of her. She drew an artist with a pallet and paint brush standing with an easel. I'll take a picture of that too, it's very cute.