The Pencil Sketch Gallery, by Shannon Fleet
Ranked #1,383 in Arts & Design, #14,841 overall
A drawing showcase of my traditional artwork.
The pencil sketch gallery is a collection of my drawings and sketches that I've put up on display much like a virtual bulletin board. I've also created this page for people to get to know me better as an artist, and a person.
This page also gives me a chance to talk about my creative processes, but if you just want to look at the drawings it's ok to skip over my ramblings, this page is about the visuals after all.
Some of the drawings here are my best and I've also included some of my worst, but I'll take a step back and let you be the judge of that.
Just as a side note, most of the artwork shown here was either given away, sold, or bartered away for stuff I needed, or wanted. So this is just for show and tell while I rebuild my body of work. I also work in digital form, but I'm keeping them off the traditional page.
This page also gives me a chance to talk about my creative processes, but if you just want to look at the drawings it's ok to skip over my ramblings, this page is about the visuals after all.
Some of the drawings here are my best and I've also included some of my worst, but I'll take a step back and let you be the judge of that.
Just as a side note, most of the artwork shown here was either given away, sold, or bartered away for stuff I needed, or wanted. So this is just for show and tell while I rebuild my body of work. I also work in digital form, but I'm keeping them off the traditional page.
Drawings and sketches at a glance.
Click on the thumbnail to go directly to that drawing.
Lylie portrait drawing
One of my favorite portraits.
5" x 7" graphite drawing on Stonehenge paper.
Lylie truly is a rare human being, she is both beautiful and warm hearted. Since we have a multitude of beautiful people running around in the world, the rarity is her wonderful caring nature. I knew drawing her would be a joy and that giving her this drawing would make her very happy. My challenge here was documenting her unique beauty and capturing the whole essence of who she is. As a bonus, I did get a bull's-eye on the likeness, which is never easy.
Here is the progress picture. I don't know if you can see them that well, but the little dots are my points of measurement. If I'm drawing from life I take a sight size like I did with my self portrait, but when drawing from a picture I like to eyeball judge the distance from this point to that point. I like to lay them down, then look over and double check my points again. I'm really careful when it comes to my Stonehenge paper, so I think I triple checked this one. This is how I start my envelope, or the area that holds the outside form so that I'm not all over the paper.
I don't always start a drawing the same way, it all depends on my mood, but this is only one of my methods. On occasion I will use a cross-hair. This is the only form of grid that my brain and patience allows me. Also, If times are lean I will start on cheapo paper and transfer the envelope or outline drawing on to my expensive paper.
Anubis Graphite drawing
Pet portrait commission
8" x 10" graphite drawing on cream toned paper.
This little dog belongs to a friend of mine, he's especially cute when he's sleeping so I couldn't resist capturing this little fart in graphite.
Midway through drawing this I got my new shipment of art supplies in. So, aside from the regular pencils I used Cretacolor's wood-less monolith pencils and those Derwent onyx dark pencils. I went a little bonkers on the little swirls for the background. I used my trusty hard 5H pencil for them. I don't know if it looks good, but it sure was enjoyable. The texture of the blanket is light, wispy strokes from the Derwent onyx pencils. I don't have enough practice with textures like these, so I hope it turned out ok.
Vasco kitty
White cat sketch
8" x 10" created with graphite pencil and white pastel on cream toned paper.
Meet the Vasco kitty. He's big, He's fluffy, and you better get out of his way because he's got a salty disposition. I wouldn't turn my back on him.
I find angry kitties to be absolutely adorable! Now, I don't know if Vasco is really an angry cat, but he's got that Tony Soprano look on his face in every picture I've ever seen him in. For this reason I just love him to pieces.
This was a very difficult drawing to pull off. Even aside from the fact that he's an all white cat. I was also very picky about capturing his grumpy expression, for without it he wouldn't of been the Vasco kitty.
Self-portrait drawing in graphite
Drawing yourself Is creepy, but creepy good.
9" x 12" Self-portrait drawing on bristol vellum
This portrait was drawn from life in the most uncomfortable way possible. When I lived in Maryland my house lacked any kind of good lighting, or place to draw.
When I created this, I was hunched over in the floor in the upstairs hallway using the bottom part of my coffee table as a mirror. Can you tell I was hunched over in the drawing? I can tell by looking at it!
I got the likeness ok, but I can see where I can do better. I really need to practice on myself more. Maybe I just needed a comfortable place to draw.
Mecha Bob Ross painting himself painting happy trees in an apocolyptic waste land.
Mecha robot drawing.
9" x 12" graphite on bristol vellum.
The world has come to an end and the only thing left is a mecha bot and his trusty critter. Thinking of his creator, the late Bob Ross, Mecha Bob paints himself painting happy trees of a by gone world.
A good friend of mine wanted me to draw this for him, but the idea was entirely his. I was pretty intimidated to draw this at first, but pushed through once I got what it would look like all sketched out.
My first mecha bob was a sad robot, but I totally misunderstood what my friend wanted and he was right. You see, even as a Mecha machine that robot is an optimist. He's got his art supplies, he's got his critter. The critter roach is crawling up the right leg of Bob's easel. Also, since he's a mecha machine, he doesn't need to eat, he never gets cold or tired, and best of all Mecha Bob doesn't care what people say about his paintings, he paints whatever the hell he wants and this makes him happy.
This was a fantastic commission. It really opened a whole world of possibilities of what I could draw. Best of all vision wasn't too far from execution, and that never happens! It taught me that I don't have to rely entirely on reality, and at the same time how important it is to practice the crap out of reality to get there. Sure, he could be better and look more real, but I'm surprised I brought him out this far.
A quick note about the scanning of this drawing. Since moving from Maryland my good scanner went Brap! The scanner I have now is really terrible. The scanner created a white flash behind Bob's easel and flattened my tonal changes on the ground and right side of the mushroom cloud. I was in a time crunch to get the commission mailed out, so there was nothing I could do about it. It's impossible to re-scan the drawing now.
A little pot apple study
Apple charcoal and graphite drawing.
12" x 9" apple graphite and charcoal study.
This was for a gift and for practice. It's mostly drawn with charcoal, but there is a fair amount of graphite in there. I was challenging myself to push the realism and sticking to my reference.
This was also my last secret Santa gift. I just don't have the time to do those anymore.
Skull and rose color pencil study.
The color pencil drawing that almost caused me to rage.
Here is my first and possibly last color pencil drawing. I am happy with the finished product and it taught me what I'm capable of when I pay attention to my reference. Color pencils just didn't agree with me. I have soul searched on why I hate them, but can't come up with one or two brief reasons, I really honestly wanted to love this medium.
I got the reference for this study here:
casanova is dead, by Márton Berta or screen name freeboi
On my drawing I wanted him flipped and pushed farther away.
Because of the learning curve on this one, it took me about three months to complete. Although sometimes I take longer than this for some of my artwork. Since I was relying completely on the reference, any other time I would have finished a lot sooner if this were just a graphite drawing, aside from that I'm normally enjoying myself when I take this long..
First, I carefully sketched out this guys head very lightly with a soft graphite pencil, then sprayed his butt with workable fixative and allowed him to dry.
Then, I carefully and softly laid in my tonal values, (scale from light to dark). I used the french gray pencils for his head and the cool gray pencils for the rose and everywhere else. I say carefully because if you overfill the tooth of the paper too quickly you can't work that area anymore.
Since I'm not too familiar with colored pencils I grabbed the color that looked like it was the right color I needed, then I tested it on a piece of scratch paper before attacking my drawing.
When I finally finished him I promptly wiped him and kicked him out of my house. Really, I just gave him to a friend as a gift, now he torments her.
Summit landscape graphite drawing.
Serentity now!
I created this with graphite pencils on 12" x 9" Bristol vellum paper.
This drawing was a secret Santa gift for one of my favorite watering holes. It had been forever since I've drawn a landscape so I decided to tackle one for fun.
The Bacchante after Gerome
Another tribute to an old master.
When I first saw Gerome's painting of the Bacchante It was love at first sight. I knew that one day I had to draw this if anything for myself. It was a bit more than just wanting the practice. I had tried several times and just wasn't getting the results I wanted.
A friend at the old artist trading card site wanted to conduct a swap called, "The mini masters series." For whatever reason I decided to try this again. I'm amazed I was more happy with this miniature study then I was with the larger ones. I worked in the zone and didn't really come back up for air on this one.
This was drawn on a gray toned charcoal paper with graphite, charcoal and white pastel.
Gargoyle graphite sketch
He's got crazy eyes.
This was one of my favorites from my sketch book. At least it was in my sketch book. I took an x-acto knife and took it out to give to someone.
Mary Cassatt
Capturing an old master.
Mary Cassatt at age 22, drawn from a really old photo I saw. I've only ever seen the older versions of her, so I had to go for it.
This miniature drawing was created with a mechanical pencil. I've found with miniatures that it's best not to blend unless you have too. Even those super skinny stumps can destroy an entire area by accident. Instead of blending, I carefully laid down the tone with my mechanical pencil to over lap some areas to create my tonal gradations.
Not a raging success this one, but it was a part of my mini practice.
Discovery landing
Space shuttle discovery landing 3.5" x 2.5" Miniature graphite drawing.
This drawing is smaller than actual size because I had tapped it to my drawing board to create a frame. I used a mechanical pencil on most of the parts, but also used some of my harder grade pencils. When using the hardest pencils you have to be careful that you don't scratch up your paper.
Also, the harder pencils are more difficult to erase then the softer pencils. Most artists don't use the hard pencils, but I find that I really love the 5H to 6H for getting some really light tones. I don't know, I can and do use light strokes with the others, but there is something about how silvery it looks when you completely fill the tooth with a hard pencil, like in the sky above the space shuttle drawing.
My little hard pencil tip.
How do I keep my hardest pencils from scratching? I take a piece of sandpaper, or nail file and bevel the tip at an angle. Make sure its smooth by swiping it across a piece of scratch paper. What you got are even silvery strokes.
Snakes in combat drawing
Pen and ink line drawing
I had the most fun with these guys. This is a miniature ink drawing, 2.5" x 3.5".
My little foot study
A self-portrait of my foot.
This was part of the weekly drawing challenge at Wetcanvas.
The Wetcanvas weekly drawing challenge is held every week to this day at an old art forum I used to frequent. The objective of the challenge is that every week an image is provided, and every artist must create a drawing from the same image by the end of the week. When finished, you are supposed to upload your drawing for constructive criticism. However, I've noticed that these days they provide a series of images a week to choose from. Well, that's not as fun! Hahahh. We all know that cracking the whip teaches people to draw better right?
I've been meaning to start doing the challenge again, but time and annoyances with the Wetcanvas site prevents me from doing it. I thought about doing it part way for my own enjoyment without the social aspect. Question is, will I actually finish by the end of the week without peer pressure.
The week this drawing was made, I scanned the bottom of my foot and made my own image contribution. My foot was immortalized! Over a dozen artists or more now have my foot burned in to their very souls! : >
Al's Chucks
Shoe still life.
Alex's favorite shoes before he wore them out. I was messing around one day and decided to draw one of them. I didn't do any blending on this because it's so small, and I left the tooth of the paper intact to give it that fabric look.
I'm terrible at a free hand star. Look at that hack job. I also um, can't draw a star the way most people do. You know what I mean, the lines going from this way and that? No, I just draw it out and fill it in. Stars are not shaped like this anyway. I'm perfecting my own methods LOL. Its like whistling, I don't know how.
Spade boot charcoal wash drawing
When drawings and paintings collide.
This drawing is one of my oldies but goodies. I'm fond of it because of all the fun I had working on it.
Drawn, or painted with charcoal that was ground into a fine powder, then immersed in to water and painted like an ink wash. Although I don't like watercolors I loved painting with charcoal. Towards the end I also added some sharp lines with soft vine charcoal to add definition.
When I conceived this drawing, it was either from memory or imagination. I'm not sure which one came first because I've drawn lots of shoes and I practice a lot of visual observation on many objects that I come across.
Broken miniature mask drawing
Getting serious a moment, but only a moment.
I drew this one with a super light touch using my hardest pencils, then used a black sharpie pen to cover the background.
This was not planned at all. I grabbed my stuff and started working on some pre cut bristol vellum pieces that I had lying around. I also finished this drawing in one sitting. I almost never do that, and most times if I do I normally draw it a second time to see if I can do a better job.
This sketch was hard to write about because to tell you the truth, I am this drawing. A small, broken individual that hides behind a mask of humor to hide the pain and misery.
The last time I wrote about and posted this drawing, I only wrote a couple of sentences of what it was made of and posted it. Well, I guess I chickened out again. I had about two pages worth of writing on it before editing it all out. I guess what I wrote above is enough to explain everything without writing a novel.
Ankle slayer miniature pastel drawing.
These shoes are real.
With this drawing I used pastel pencils on a cream colored charcoal paper. I really didn't need a toned paper for this, but It was already the size I needed and I was out of white toothy paper.
I found I liked the pastel pencils much more than the pastel sticks. They can be a pain in the rump because of breakage, but I do like the softer variety I would much rather blend than cross hatch.
“Are you sick of my chatter? I shall be quiet and let you enjoy some of my crappier work.”
True love portrait drawing.
Graphite portrait drawing.
Large mouth bass study
Wetcanvas weekly drawing challenge
Kitten sketch with ink and graphite on clayboard
Testing out the clayboard
Coil snake doodle
Ink pen doodle sketch
I hate this one. I was obsessed with the snake scales after drawing snakes in combat. There is another worse than this. Sometimes what you enjoy doesn't bring you good results.
Get ready for a long poll!
Which one of these drawings are your favorite?
I hope you enjoyed my pencil gallery, and I hope you enjoy long polls. Please vote for your favorites here. Go to the Pencil sketch gallery wall to comment on this poll.
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Sketch drawings that I forgot to add to the gallery.
My older sketch work.
This is the under drawing for my soft pink rose digital painting.
More pencil sketch artists
Home spun collection of great pencil sketch blogs and artists.
This will be a growing and changing list. :)
- Scrap paper sketches
- The wonderful scrap paper sketches of Flyn the cat.
- Doodle Art
- Doodling is near and dear to my heart, so when I choose a link to plop down related to sketching, one of them has to be about doodling.
- See. Draw. Share.
- The fantastic drawing and sketches, by artist Mellanie Collins
- Clive Meredith Wildlife Art
- Clive Meredith also includes works in progress of his paintings, but my favorites are his in progress graphite drawings! He takes you through his entire progress! I love it so much.
- Jen's Gallery
- Fun pencil sketches as well as the artists personal journey. This page is well worth the read and the looking.
- Daily Creativity by Keeping a Sketchbook
- AMEN! Full title of this page is, How to Make Drawing a Part Of Your Life | Daily Creativity by Keeping a Sketchbook. It really is a motivating read and gets you up off your duff and drawing.
No matter if you can't draw, this page shows the fun and therapeutic side of drawing and sketching. - Face drawing - how to do draw a face
- In case you are wanting some drawing lessons I happened upon this article on how to draw or sketch the face. I say head too because if you pay attention to his diagram on where the eyes are placed you will also get a pretty good idea where everything else goes.
- Pencil sketching
- Awesome pencil sketches done using a single pencil, by artist Samaira.
- Sketching On Location
- Wonderfully expressive sketches done on location and some practical advice, by spiritartist, Sandy.
- A Drawing A Week Lens
- I just discovered this page about ten minutes ago and I'm super excited about checking it out every week.
This is a drawing a week lens. There will be a new drawing posted every single week. How cool is that?
I've seen and love the daily drawing blogs, but this kind of a different spin that I could relate to a lot more. I'm way too OCD to ever complete a drawing a day, though I admire the daily folks.
Hey, I missed something!
Previous contents at a glance.
Play it again, Sam.
How have I done with this page?
If you liked my gallery let me know.
This module only appears with actual data when viewed on a live lens. The favorite and lensroll options will appear on a live lens if the viewer is a member of Squidoo and logged in.
Here, everyone can share the gallery!
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Pencil sketch gallery wall
Scratch your thoughts on the gallery wall.
Everyone is welcome to comment without registration to Squidoo. However, I do moderate comments, but this is only to stamp out spam. Everything not spam will be published! So, yap away and tell me what's on your mind.
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jonart
Feb 6, 2012 @ 2:56 am | delete
- Nice lens....enjoyed looking at your art.
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Morgannafay
Feb 6, 2012 @ 1:41 pm | delete
- Thanks Jon :)
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bobby150
Jan 28, 2012 @ 3:07 pm | delete
- Great work. Really loved looking at all your sketches and drawings.
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Morgannafay
Jan 28, 2012 @ 9:17 pm | delete
- Thanks for stopping by, Bobby <3 I'm glad you enjoyed. :)
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Annamadagan
Jan 23, 2012 @ 7:03 pm | delete
- Cool sketches! I really like them.
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Morgannafay
Jan 23, 2012 @ 10:59 pm | delete
- Thanks Anna!
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hntrssthmpsn
Jan 22, 2012 @ 10:25 pm | delete
- Seriously, I can't stay away from this lens. Your art is so lovely! I keep coming back to check for new additions, and to let your wonderfully irreverent writing style make me smile :)
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Morgannafay
Jan 23, 2012 @ 2:02 pm | delete
- Thanks so much! I just added the photogal module to include some sketches I forgot. I don't know how much more I could squeeze in here without being a load problem lol.
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kathysart
Jan 19, 2012 @ 1:35 pm | delete
- Wonderful art! I especially like your apple study.. fantastic. Your lens reminds me once again how important sketching is and how glorious it can be. Angel blessed!
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Morgannafay
Jan 19, 2012 @ 7:04 pm | delete
- Thank you so much Kathy! :)
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Artist Bio
All stuff about me
by Morgannafay
Morgannafay
I'm a 37 year old visual artist trying to emerge. I live in Ohio with my super lovable Alex and our two sugar glider kids, Danu and Annie. I'm an extr... more »
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My other art pages
Pencils without the wood
Woodless graphite pencils.
Cretacolor Monolith Box- Woodless Graphite Pencil Drawing Set
Amazon Price: $17.00 (as of 02/22/2012)
Just like Cretacolor's regular pencils, these woodless pencils create smooth and even marks with no scratchiness. They can also be sharpened just like the regular wood pencils. They've been an awesome alternative to graphite sticks and pencils when I'm not drawing teeny tiny details.
Derwent Onyx sketching pencils.
The perfect on the go sketching tool.
Derwent Onyx Pencil Pack of 4 with Accessories - Assorted Degrees
Amazon Price: $5.37 (as of 02/22/2012)
I haven't made up my mind on the Derwent Onyx when it comes to more serious work, but I've fallen in love with their portability, strength and the versital mark making abilites.
If you want to simplify the amount of sketching supplies you take along with you, this one is all you need. It makes a variety of marks with changes in pressure, from light to black. The pencil tip is also more durable than most pencils. This is the pencil I drop down in my pocket book for those sketching emergencies.
