Thursday, February 24, 2011

Costumed Figure Drawing: week 6 in-class work, plus bonus!









The model that was supposed to show up this day called in "sick" (yeah, on Valentine's Day), so Lee taught us how to draw clothing folds and later had us draw from photos. I used my beloved 513EF nib for the studies.

My second 7" x 10" watercolor sketchbook is officially done! The horse skull study and simple cat were drawn at The Original Hotcake and Steak House; same night I introduced Allyson to the restaurant.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Watercolor Moleskine, Page 1!



^ M. Graham watercolors on Moleskine watercolor paper. Phoenix-like birds from my head to test out the sketchbook and play with layering color.

My scanner does not treat watercolors that well.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Exercises from Lee's watercolor workshop!










^ This final study, done today at home, is based off of the work of one of Lee's favorite watercolorists (whose name I've unfortunately forgotten). The blue-to-red wash was done first - with some salt added for fun - followed by the ground plane. Next came the tree trunks and branches, and finally the leaves. A really fun exercise!

Paper is Arches Bright White 140lb.; watercolors are M. Graham. They're a blast to use and are my first professional-grade watercolors.

I still need to finish that sphere....

Friday, February 11, 2011

Costumed Figure Drawing: week 5's home studies!

Here are some drawings I'm eager to share. Rather than continue the 'painterly' fad, I decided to go back to what I feel is one of my core strengths: pen and ink drawing.



^ Drawn in my 6" x 9" Canson watercolor block with Speedball Super Pigmented Acrylic Ink and a 513EF nib; light wash added with a water brush. I went off of my personal notes and tried to emulate Peter Chung's (Aeon Flux) work a bit.

As much as I disliked the single line technique in the beginning drawing classes way back when, I incorporated some almost-single-line drawing in this study. I like the effect.


^ A repeat study, this time in my 7" x 10" watercolor pad (second one!). I used the 513EF nib again, but the ink is Higgins Calligraphy Waterproof Black Ink. It's far more subtle than the Speedball ink. Speedball is the best ink I've used.


^ Back to Speedball. For inspiration, I looked through my books on Eugene Delacroix and Henrich Kley. Their draftsmanship is unparalleled - particularly Kley's, if you want my biased opinion. These two studies were a lot of fun!


^ Final study for the day (now yesterday; I need to stop feeding my night owl habits). I think I'll turn this guy into an angel-type figure with a broken wing.

THIS is the direction I want to push forward in, something more illustrative and catered to my strengths. I had fun with the first few projects, but I want to use the inker's approach for more of my projects.

Costumed Figure Drawing: week 5 in-class work!

Warming up took a while, but I'm pretty happy most of these pages, and I'm fond of the last seven. They were done with a Tombow Dual Brush Pen and an Aubergine Derwent Graphitint pencil; both are watersoluble, so mixing them produced interesting results.

We had our first male model this night. He was dressed as a waiter, though that's barely discernible from my sketches.
















Costumed Figure Drawing: building up from breaking down.



My weakest piece to date (the right edge is cropped). I learned how difficult it is to try to reproduce colors in different media from my studies onto a final piece. I received good crits on it - and believe me, it's good to get crits on something you're not happy with, so you know how to fix it later - but varying factors I experienced Monday night stressed me to the point of depression by the time I got home. I worry too much sometimes about how I'll get myself out in the art world, and it's heightened a bit by my impending graduation.

I skipped my morning class Tuesday and got ten hours of sleep rather than four; the lack of sleep I would have had was a huge factor in stressing me out. Felt infinitely better afterward.

I'll treat it as a learning experience.

Costumed Figure Drawing: week 4's home studies!

I played around with a Sharpie, a #1 round brush and ink, walnut ink, and my beloved Derwent Inktense. New to my collection of inks and watercolors is a bottle of Dr. Ph. Martin's Radiant Concentrated Watercolor - Mahogany.












Costumed Figure Drawing: backlogged in-class work!

These are my in-class drawings from week 4. The model brought three outfits: nun, bar maid (Lee dubbed that costume "wench"), and a burlesque dancer. Progressively naughtier, heh.