Exploring Body Parts

Life, once again, gets in the way. I have had little time to draw of late and what time I had was short. So, if you don’t have time to draw the whole figure, then draw an interesting part of it. I was doodling around and was experimenting with various body parts.

Mostly in graphite but I also experimented with my Pitt Artist Pens – I bought a set of the Gray shades a while back and hadn't really done much with them.

The reference for some of these was Bridgmans Complete Guide to Drawing from Life - hence the muscular appearance.

Ladybug, Ladybug Fly Away Home

I am not a real fan of digital cameras, at least not for serious photographic work. There are serious archival problems with digital that have not been addressed by any of the technologies in place to date. That's not to say that digital cameras are not useful - I do have one that I use a lot for quick reference photos. But for real serious photos I still rely on my film cameras. But, I digress from my intended purpose for this post.

The other day I was waiting for my lovely bride, enjoying the sunny afternoon when a tiny ladybug landed on the knee of my blue jeans. I decided to experiment with the macro mode of my little digital camera. It was touch and go, there, because the sun was quite bright and it was difficult to see the image on the view screen. The macro mode also requires a very steady hand or a tripod – since I didn’t have a tripod handy and if I did it would have been awkward to try and set it up to take a picture of my knee. So, it was to be a hand held operation. Several tries later and coaxing the poor ladybug to stay put I managed to get one sharp image.


For those interested the camera is a Canon PowerShot SD400 5mega pixel model. It has a macro mode and a 3x optical zoom and 12x digital zoom. It is a very small and compact camera – probably the main reason I bought it. I am happy with it for what I use it for.