I'm still doing bicycle images. Here I drew the bikes directly onto wood panels which had already recieved some paint or bits of old posters. I then developed the panels with more paint and word stencils. These panels are quite small.

Bicycle stencils - first cut.

Today I simplified my drawings even further (see yesterdays posting) and cut my first stencils for three years! I transferred my design to acetate sheet and used a heat cutter for the first time (I only burned myself once). It's a lot easier than using a knife on card which is what I used to do. A big and belated "Thank You" to my friend Diane who bought me the cutter a couple of years ago.

The top image is the 1950's cruiser owned by my neighbor Matt.

The lower image is the OS single speed 29er owned by my neighbor and good friend John.

I have great neighbors!

Bicycle stencils

I want to make some bike stencils to spray onto my paintings. When you make a stencil you have to simplify a drawing as much as possible and then some more. Then you have to make sure that the lines to be cut don't join other lines or else, after hours of work, a major part of your design will just drop out of the middle of the stencil! Here are two designs I'm working on - they still need to be simplified.

It's getting warm!

The rain this week has brought slightly warmer temperatures in my studio. I'm pleased to announce that today my thermometer got up to 60 degrees F (15 C for my UK followers). I celebrated by not wearing my sheepskin hat or long underwear. Yippee!

Even more bicycles!

I've spent the last week in my studio drawing bicycles. As you can see in the photograph above I've been drawing on paper - it's less "precious" and therefore less intimidating. With all that practice I'm becoming more confident and I've started to draw straight onto wood panels which have already been prepared with paint or posters. Now it's starting to feel more urban!

I'm going to try projecting some of my drawings onto large panels next week - watch this space.

More Bicycles (5-minute sketches):

I'm really enjoying this bicycle drawing task I've set myself. On New Years Day I spent a couple of hours in my studio with a friend drawing his Globe bicycle. We had a lot of fun! These are gesture poses - ie. the time limit for each drawing was two tracks on my bad party CD (aproximately 5 minutes). This is a common thing to do when drawing the figure as it makes you respond quickly to shape and line without getting bogged down in detail.

Now I need to borrow an old road bike off someone, and perhaps a "fixie".