Graphite Pencil Drawings

Still Life Painting

2007-10-25T11:46:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted anything to this blog in a while but I need to get back into the swing of things. Every once in a while I go through dry spells but I always come back. I bought some oil paints a while ago and I've done one painting so far. But I am starting a new still life painting today. The still life scene is a wine bottle, wine glass, and autumn leaf on a napkin. Everything is on a wood table.

Here is a picture of me drawing the outline on my canvas. I have the still life scene set up on my drawing table. And yes, that is a t-shirt stapled to the wall as a backdrop. I couldn't find a black sheet.

This is another picture of the still life scene and my finished outline.

Commissioned Car Drawing> 84 Trans AM> Knight Rider

2007-01-25T13:23:00.000-08:00

I've been waiting on this commission for a while. I knew the woman wanted it but she took her time getting the reference pictures to me. This is a drawing of her husband's 1984 Trans AM (which is the same car as was used in "Knight Rider" I found out). Most of the car drawings I've done so far have been from a group of men who race their cars at a local drag strip. It seems to be the domino effect in that, I do a car drawing and then someone sees it and wants one too. So that's been cool, I hope this one generates another car drawing.

The reference photos she provided me with were not the best in the world. I had to make certain areas of this drawing up from my head. I tried to make it look like the rear wheels were spinning in this drawing too, not sure if I succeeded in that but it was fun trying something new. Hope you guys like it.

9"x12" Fabriano Hotpress
3B, B, H pencils
blending stumps
12 hours
car drawing, 84 trans am

Car Drawing Commission- Update

2007-01-24T19:52:00.000-08:00

I was back working on this car drawing tonight. It shouldn't be too much longer until it's completed now. Maybe tomorrow. :)

Car Drawing - 84 Trans AM

Car Drawing Commission - 84 Trans AM

2007-01-23T11:12:00.000-08:00

This is what I am currently working on. I have been talking with a customer about doing a car drawing for her for a while but I've been waiting on her to send me some reference pictures. I finally picked up the reference pictures last weekend and started this on Monday. It's a car drawing of her husband's 84 Trans AM. It's the same car they used in Knight Rider, minus the machine gun terots, haha. This car was slightly modified though. The man races it at a local drag strip. My last couple car drawings have stemmed from eachother. I did the last one and then this customer saw it and wanted one. And hopefully someone will see this drawing when I'm done with it and want one :) Anyways, here's the drawing so far:

Car Drawing in progress

Finsiehd up, commissions, and new drawing project

2006-10-20T18:07:00.000-07:00

I finished up the still life drawing of Jack Daniels that I am calling "Intoxicated". The drawing took me a very long time to do and I am relieved to have it done finally. For a while it seemed like I was never going to finish it. And then I kept getting commission inquiries so I thought that I was going to have to put it aside for a while to do one of those. "Intoxicated" took me about 60 hours total and it's on 14"x20" Fabriano Hotpress watercolor paper. I hope everyone enjoyed watching the process of it and I hope you like the finished work.

After "Intoxicated" was complete I had a commission to work on. The commissioned drawing was a 3 person portrait. The woman asked me to draw her 2 children and her sister's child. She wanted all of the portraits somehow connected so I did circle backgounds on each individual portrait and connected them that way. This drawing was good practice for me. I am not really used to drawing this small. Each of the portraits were about 4 inches tall. Usually I draw portraits alot bigger than this. The overall drawing is 11"x14". My customer wanted the drawing framed and matted so I framed it to 16"x20" and she wanted a slate blue matte. Overall I was happy with this work. My customer expressed an interest in having more portraits done in the future. It was shipped off to Surprise, Arizona, haha.

When that commission was complete, I started another commission. This time I was approached via my website about having a portrait done of Morrissey. I had no idea who Morrissey was so I looked him up online. Turns out he's the lead singer of "The Smiths". My customer asked for this work to be on 9.5"x12" paper. I was happy with the drawing when finished but in particular I was really happy with the hair. I think this was another small breakthrough I had in drawing hair. I wished I would have used this method when drawing my Armin Mersmann portrait a few months back but live and learn.

Now for my current project. I have had several more inquiries about commissions but nothing set in stone yet. So I started my own drawing until another commission. This time I am drawing a figure drawing of Next Door Nikki. Let me warn you that if you try to find out who she is on a search engine or something, you may be exposed to nude pictures. She is a softcore porn star. I am doing this figure drawing in pastels. This will be my first time using pastels. I ordered some Rembrandt soft pastels a while ago and have been itching to use them. So I finally am getting to try them out. So far I really enjoy working with them. They are such a forgiving medium. If you go too dark in a certain area, you can lighten by blending with some tissue. If you go too light in an area, just add more. Soft pastels are also erasable, so that's a plus. And they are blendable which makes me lean towards these rather than colored pencil. I think I will be using pastels alot in the future. Here's a picture of me working on the current drawing.

Intoxicated WIP - Lettering

2006-09-20T19:54:00.000-07:00

I am still working on the broken bottle drawing. It's probably going to end up being one of my most ambitious undertakings to this point. I have tons and tons of hours into it and I know I have tons and tons of hours left on it. If I had to start over on this drawing, I think I would have done a background so that the highlights would shine more. With the highlights and the background both being white, they aren't as brilliant as they could be with a toned background. Anyways, I am still working on the lettering, which is going slow. Everything will be very detailed though so it will pay off in the end. Here's an updated picture of the drawing:

Pencil Drawing- Intoxicated WIP

2006-09-18T19:44:00.000-07:00

I am still plugging away at this drawing. I knew it was going to be a big project when I started it. I estimated that it would probably take me about a month. Maybe a little more, who knows. Depends on how motivated I am to work on it at night. Tonight I worked a little more on the lettering. This part is a huge pain in the ass. Well, it's not that bad I suppose. It's just really really tedious. Not particularly difficult though. I have to draw around all the lettering with a 3B mechanical pencil and make sure everything is crisp and straight. Then I am going over the actual letters with a B pencil. Doing this will make the highlights in the drawing more spectacular. If I just left all the lettering white, the highlights would be less noticable and wouldn't be as important. But since I am drawing glass and it's reflective, I want the highlights to sparkle as best as they possibly can. I took a couple pictures of me working on the drawing tonight. The left one shows where I'm at with it and the right picture shows how close my face is to the drawing while I am working on the lettering. I have been setting very small goals for myself everytime I work on this drawing and doing the best I can on it.

Tutorials and JD WIP

2006-09-12T16:43:00.000-07:00

Listening to: Tori Amos - "A Case of You"

Recently I have been getting alot of e-mails asking for more tutorials on my website. When I started the tutorials section I had planned on adding to it quite frequently but I guess I was being lazy and haven't really added much to it in a while. But the other day I got an e-mail from someone asking how to draw eyes. I got motivated and sat down that day and worked on a tutorial. For that tutorial I chose to draw Armin Mersmann's eye because...well, he's my hero. The tutorial turned out pretty good I think and I recieved alot of "thank yous". So this past Sunday I sat down and decided to do another tutorail. This time dealing with drawing still life. I chose to draw a zippo lighter for this tutorial. I have drawn a couple of them before and I always enjoy drawing them. I think the still life tutorial was alot more difficult to explain but alot of people seemed to enjoy that one too. I am now motivated to do alot more tutorials so be on the lookout. :) Here are the links to them:
Eye Drawing Tutorial
Still Life Drawing Tutorial
The finished tutorial drawings:

I have been working on a new drawing in the midst of the tutorials. It's a fairly big project. It might be my most ambitious undertaking so far. I'm not sure. We'll see in the end. I chose to draw a broken Jack Daniels bottle. I drew a couple bottles in 2004 and 2005 but I feel like my skills are much more honed in now and I am able to produce more realistic work. The previous broken bottle I did I neglected alot of details and I didn't draw alot of the small shards. This time I am drawing every little piece of glass that came off of the bottle when I broke it. I feel the drawing is going very well. I have loads of hours into it already and I am not even half done. Here is a picture of me working on the drawing tonight:

Weekend

2006-08-20T18:40:00.000-07:00

I didn't do a whole lot this weekend. On Friday I wanted to hang out with my buddy John who recently became single. He's been having a tough time with it and I thought it might be nice to get him out of the house. So I picked him up at his house at around 6 o clock. From there we drove over to my buddy Dave's house stopping at the liquor store on the way. When we got there we were the first ones to arrive. John had never been over to Dave's house before so he showed him around. We played a game of horseshoes as more people slowly started arriving. Last weekend the girls had planned a "girl's night" out so this was our "guy's night". Dave built a fire and we sat around the fire and played horseshoes all night. It was me, Dave, John, Dave's brother-in-law Brian, his buddy, Don, Brandon, Dave's dad, T-bone, Joe, and Steve Oquist. Pretty fun, laid back night, aside from the fact that Dave pelted me in the shin with a fricking horseshoe. I'm fine though. We all stayed up until like 3:30 in the morning. I didn't sleep very well over at his house that night for some reason. Got like 2 hours of sleep total.

I brought John home at around 7 the next morning and drove over to Kenny's. I had told him that I would go golfing with him earlier in the week. I've been practicing chipping alot lately so I was really curious to see how I'd shoot. When we got to the course there was about an hour and a half wait. So we drove into Marne to a pizza place and had some pizza. We went back to the course and chipped around a little bit till they called our name. Me and Kenny were shooting pretty well but it seemed like everyone else on the course were shooting like shit. There were constantly people shooting onto our fairways, almost hitting us. I'm pretty easy going on the course but it pissed Kenny off a couple of times. I was ahead most of the game but Kenny came back on the last couple holes to beat me. I shot a 41 and he shot a 40. But it was a fun time. Next weekend is his bachelor party which we are golfing at so I will kick his ass then. Here's the scorecard from Saturday:

I am still working on the commission drawing but it is almost done now. The deadline for the drawing is next Monday so I will ship it off this week sometime to California.

New Commission

2006-08-09T22:39:00.000-07:00

I worked some more on the colored pencil drawing of Tiger Woods today. I did some more of his shirt. But now I will have to put that off for a while because I recieved a commission today. It's for a guy in Los Angeles. He wants me to do a portrait of himself and his fiance. He chose a bigger size too, which is awesome because I have really been diggin working bigger lately.

I talked to Kenny earlier in the day today and he asked me to go play some golf. That sounded good to me so I got ready and took off to his house. Then we drove another 20 minutes to a golf course South of Grand Rapids. It's the same course we played on Sunday, Mullenhurst. My game was really on today though. I made some really awesome shots. When I was shooting like I was today, golf is really fun. Some days you are on, some days off I guess.

I got home at around 11 PM and started work on this new commission. It's going well so far. I got the outline done and started on his hair. This one will go slow but I am going to work alot on it in the coming days. I have to have it done by the 28th.

Tiger Woods CP

2006-08-08T19:06:00.000-07:00

I am now 2 days into my colored Tiger Woods drawing. It's going really well so far. I think it's looking very realistic and I'm pretty happy with the skin tones. I have never drawn a dark skinned person in colored pencil. Hell, I haven't drawn very many dark skinned people in graphite either. I feel like my colored drawings have improved drastically recently and I hope this new one isn't an exception. I have probably spent around 6 or 7 hours on this drawing so far but it feels like I am going very slow. This is a full figure drawing of Tiger swinging an iron. I have the face, hat, arms, and part of his shirt done right now. I don't want to scan this drawing yet to show an update because I don't want the pigments to smear. I think I will wait until the end to scan it and let it be a surprise to everyone. A few more hours to work on it tonight and then i will call it a night. :)

06 Buick Open

2006-08-07T19:19:00.000-07:00

This weekend was so cool. I really had alot of fun. On Friday I talked to my buddy, Kenny on the phone. He told me that he was going to go to the Buick Open, which is a PGA (professional golf association) event. I told him that I would love to go to that and he said he wished he would have known because he would have bought me a ticket when he got his. So I got off the phone with him and about an hour later he called back saying that he managed to get an extra ticket. I drove down to Grand Rapids on Friday night to get a frame for the Trans AM drawing and I went shopping with my mom for a while. I had planned on going to either Dave's house or Kenny's that night but decided to just go home and get some rest. I knew Saturday was going to be a long day. So I woke up Saturday at around 6 AM. Got all ready and drove down to Kenny's house. We hit the road for the Buick Open at around 8. The event was in Grand Blanc which is a couple hours away. We finally arrived. I have a little bit of a phobia about big crowds so when we got there I had a couple shots in the car. Then we got out and walked over to the shuttle busses. On the way over to the busses an event worker told us that we could jump into any of the Buick Lacernes that were lined up. So we jumped in a car and the guy drove us over to the country club. We got there and walked up to the front gates. Kenny's fiance's mom was at the Open too and we had to wait for her to bring us the tickets so we waited by the entrance and watched some of the pros on the driving range. I was really star struck at first because I see all these guys on television but it's totally different seeing them in person. Fred Funk was driving about 20 feet from us. So his future mother in law finally showed up with the tickets and we were admitted. We started walking around the place. Made our way over to the practice green where there were TONS of people. I saw John Daly immediately. It was so cool. Then John packed up his stuff and he was walking to his first hole. We followed him because his group was first. We folloed him for a couple holes and then moved on when we got word that Tiger Woods was going to be starting his day. We got over to his hole and stood by the ropes. I don't think many people knew where Tiger was going to be because it was pretty dead over there at first. We saw a group go past us but no Tiger. Then I saw a really dark guy coming over the top of the hill. Tiger?!! Nope. But it was Vijay Singh!!! He had a really tough second shot underneath a tree. He swung his club and THUMP...hit the tree and ricacheted over towards where me and Kenny were standing!!! Me and Kenny both looked at eachother and he said "dude, he's going to walk right past us!". So he came looking for his ball and I actually got to hold the rope up for him to get to his ball!! It was really crazy how close I was to him. He nodded to me too when I held the rope for him. I actually might have been on television at that part of the day if they were following him at that time. So finally Vijay figured out his shot and hit. Then the next group was Tiger!!! I was really star struck seeing him. He walked right past us and I yelled out "C'mon Tiger!!". He tipped his hat in my direction. It was really surreal. Then we followed him to the next hole. After the next hole he walked right past us...like 5 feet away from me. Again I yelled to him..."Yeah Tiger!!" and then started clapping. Alot of other people started clapping too. I started a gallery applause for him as he walked by!! Anyone reading this is probably like "what a nerd for getting so excited about this" but I love golf. I watch it whenever it's on tv and these guys are heros to me. We followed Tiger for a couple more holes and then decided to go watch someone else. So as we were walking I saw Jim Furyk on a hole and told Kenny I wanted to watch him for a while. He was a really nice guy. Always said thank you to people if they said encouraging words, always aknowledged people's applause. I yelled out to him a couple times too. Then we got a little bored with watching him. I think we were both a little sick of standing in the middle of mobs of people too so we went to watch some of the lesser known players. We made our way over to a group with hardly any spectators. One of the players hit his ball right by the ropes so we walked over to check out the lie and watch him hit his next shot up close. He came over and I nodded to him, he nodded back and conversed with his caddy for a second. Then he chose a club and hit his shot. It really wasn't a bad shot but he got EXTREMELY pissed off and threw his club and started swearing. He was a really young guy, probably younger than me and Kenny. His name was Jeff Overton. Then on his next shot he did the same thing, cussing and throwing his clubs. I couldn't believe they let him react like that in a professional event. He was like the real Happy Gilmore, hahaha. We followed him for a while and then got tired. We watched Kenny Perry then. He was a really nice guy too. Then we both were really tired from being in the sun all day and decided to call it a day. We made our way to the bus and it took us back to the car. It was a day that I won't soon forget. I really had a good time. I am already looking forward to going next year!! The only thing that sucked about the event was that you were not allowed to have a camera or a phone. I really would have liked to get some pictures of these guys :(

Saturday night we went back to Jennie's house. We just swam in the pool and went in the hot tub. Everyone was drinking but I was too tired, didn't even feel like drinking. I stayed the night over at Jennie's house and then the next day me and Kenny went golfing with his uncle. We went to a course called Mulenhurst. I brought my camera with me but only took one picture. We played 18 holes, it was really fun after watching the pros the previous day.

I delivered the Trans AM drawing too. The customer was really happy with it. He liked the framing and matting too. I'm glad I got to draw another car. Hopefully I will do another one sometime.

After all the golf action this weekend I decided I wanted to do a portrait of Tiger Woods. I looked around for some pictures of him online. I thought it would be pretty cool to draw one of him from Saturday so I found one that I liked and started it tonight. I am not really far enough to show an update but I will soon.

Finished up

2006-08-03T18:34:00.000-07:00

Well I have finally finished the Trans AM commission drawing. I worked on it for about 5 more hours today until it was completed. It feels good to have it done now and I can relax on the weekend and come back with something new on Monday. Hopefully it will be another commission (if you want me to do a commission for you, send me an e-mail this weekend with a reference picture). Otherwise I might just mess around with my new pastels.

Tomorrow I am going to go into town early so I can go to the frame shop. I will get this Trans AM framed an matted and possibly deliver it to my customer. When I get it to the customer I will see about taking some pictures of him with the drawing, maybe even get his car in a picture too, that'd be cool.

I will probably be gone most of this weekend. But if you send me mail or anything I always check all my stuff when I get home on Sunday. :)

Here is the finished drawing:

Trans AM Still

2006-08-02T19:01:00.001-07:00

I have been doing sit-ups every night since the beginning of the year at 10 PM (my new years resolution) so I think I will update this blog everynight around that time too. If something becomes routine, then it's alot easier to keep up with.

The Trans AM drawing is still coming along very slowly. I am getting anxious to have it done now but I still need to slow myself down and do a good job on it. I probably have a couple hours of work on it still. This drawing has taken a very long time. I have enjoyed it but it will be nice to move on and get started on something else. Still no set in stone plans for the next project. Here's a couple pictures...an update and one of me working on it. Please look past my naked upper body...it's extremely hot here in Michigan these days.

Something totally not art related. We just got a call from our neighbor saying that her internet was not working and she couldn't figure it out. So I jump on my 4-wheeler and ride over to her house. When I get there she leads me to the den where the computer is and explains that it keeps saying "cannot connect to server". So I sit down and click on her AOL icon. Everything comes up fine. Then she says "Oh, I thought you just click on the Internet Explorer icon and it will be online". I then explained to her that some people's internet works like that but since we live in the middle of nowhere, cable modems aren't an option. Hahaha. It kind of cracked me up because of how computer illiterate some people are. Or maybe I'm just a fricking nerd and I need my ass beat. :)

Thanks for reading.

Trans AM Winding Down

2006-08-01T20:53:00.000-07:00

I have been working on this Trans AM drawing for a while tonight. I really think this is turning out great. I almost don't want to give it to my client, haha. Anyways, I worked some more on the fender area, hood, and the other wheel. The new wheel took me a very long time. I wanted it to be very lusterous and chrome looking. Also I tried to make it very precise so that it looked somewhat "real". My mechanical pencils were used quite a bit on both the wheels. This project ate up a whole 3B pencil too, haha. I thought I'd try something different on the cast shadow so I pulled up some lines with an eraser giving a grassy effect. I should have this drawing done either tomorrow or possibly the next day.

My next project is pretty much up in the air. I do know that I'd like to do a sort of character drawing of myself possibly to use on my website. I haven't drawn a "cartoony" drawing in a very long time and I think it would be kind of fun to break away from realism and work freehand for a change. I have recieved quite a few inquiries on commissioned drawings so far this week which is an awesome thing. I need all the work I can get.

Hello

2006-08-01T11:03:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone. I just made this blog. My name is Brian Duey and I am from Grand Rapids, MI. I am an artist who specializes in pencil drawings. My website is located at http://www.dueysdrawings.com/
if you'd like to have a look. My intent with this blog is to record ideas that I have for upcoming works and to talk about anything art related. I will also talk a little bit about things that are going on in my personal life. I am hoping to update this quite often.

I am currently working on a drawing for a client of his Pontiac Trans AM. It's going pretty well so far. I'd say that I'm probably about 70% done with it. I talked with the client this past weekend and he seemed very happy with the way the work was going. He really liked the wheels in particular and he kept asking me how I was able to get a "chrome" look with just graphite pencils. I always love it when a customer is as excited about a drawing as I am. It motivates me even more and makes me take some extra time to add the little details that I know he will appreciate. Here's an update on the current work:

I'm really not sure what's next for me after this commission is done. I purchased a 45 piece set of Rembrandt pastels (portrait colors) about a week ago and I've been really excited to use them. So maybe I will get those out and experiment a little bit. Otherwise I have a couple of concept ideas that I'd like to get down on paper. I have alot of ideas scribbled down on a piece of paper next to my work area. I am going to type them out here just in case the paper is misplaced. If you are an artist, please do not rip off any of these ideas. They are very intimate ideas, that were straight from MY imagination. This is mostly just for my record:

*Portrait behind glass
*Portrait behind paper showing all folds and ripples in the paper
*Taped Paper
*Behind table looking at playing cards coming to life
*Matches
*Portrait with padlock in picture with key hanging down (hands shackled)
*Colored cloud background, key with gasket around it in the middle, self portrait at the bottom looking up, keyhole in forehead
*Self portrait split up into blocks with hands coming through the blocks and cast shadows
*Grayscale self portrait with colored angel on shoulder whispering into an ear, colored devil on the other
*Broken alcohol bottle with liquid all over, small self figure looking up from wreckage

Thanks for reading and I will update soon.