Set the Tone

This week in Life Drawing, Bobby had us purely focus on tone and shadow - so much so that we had to draw all of our poses ONLY using shapes of the shadows, no linework. Sound easy.....it wasn't! Without blocking in your drawing, things can get out of proportion SO easily unless you concentrate like a crazy monkey. [Don't ask.]

So, call me a crazy monkey, but although it was reeealllllllly challenging, I loved trying to see things more as abstract shapes of tone and shadow and not, 'Oh that's a leg, or an arm, or a shoe,'....I can see how this will definitely help the strength of my drawing skillz if I keep on practicin'!

I tried out what I learned by putting one of my fav films in, Singin in the Rain, and doing a couple quick watercolours by painting tone only. [see below!]




How can you NOT love Gene Kelly??

Drawrings o' life

Here's some more life drawings / caffe sketches from the last couple weeks of life drawing class. We are working on drapery, tone and lighting....and did I mention drawing 2 models is tough!

Once again, I feel the more I learn, the more I need to learn.......the more I want to learn!

I hope that feeling never goes away, 'cause isn't that what life is all about??

Stylin'

A life drawring from last week's class; trying to emulate a given style of an existing artist whilst doing life drawing.

Oh, it's all about style these days! I am studying up a storm of the style I want to achieve with my film....as well we are focusing on a style for our life drawing portfolio.

Now, I thought MAYbe I would attempt [ATTEMPT!] to marry the style of my life drawing portfolio with my film style so I would kill 2 birds with one stone. Hmm. I don't like killing birds. So I'd get more stuff done in less time, how's that??

But, anyway, that didn't work. The style for my film is more simplified than I like to do for life drawing. So I looked to Peter deSeve for his masterful inspiration on my life drawings!

Back to drawring life....year 4!

OH golly, talk about jumping back into the deep end! First week of school, and already we have to present our story concept, homework for 2 electives and 3 hours of intense life drawing.

Hmm, perhaps I thought it was intense because I never picked up a piece of conte the entire summer. Or MAYbe I thought it was intense 'cause I was still in summer mode...

Who knows. Regardless, I thought I was gonna completely bomb and draw pure stick figures. Couple that with the pressure of handing something in at the end of class - well, I wasn't exactly looking forward to the results. But I tried to just, phew, let go, just see what happens.

Here's the highlights....not TOO bad for first week back! These are all 1 minute or 5 minute gestures. Ed was wearing a hippie costume - if ya couldn't tell from the fro wig!

Wowza, 4th year. Insane in the membrane.










Part of our sketchbook assignment this week: a page of realistic drawings from life. Fortunately I spent the weekend at Pipe Creek Farm, a beautiful B&B in Western NY, and they had many animals to draw! Although I have to say....it was reeeeeeaaaallllllly hard to draw realisticallllly. MUCH more fun to stylize!

Final Life Drawing portfolio

I can't believe it's already time for our final life drawing portfolio of the year... but alas, the time has come! Well, I have learned heaps, and feel like I am just beginning to understand how colour works and this whole world of caricature and costume...

This last portfolio has felt very rushed, what with our film being due in mere days now [ACK!!], life drawing has definitely been pushed to the back seat. Or, maybe even the trunk....

BUT I am excited to start to implement all I have learned this summer, whew!
Here's the pieces I chose for my final portfolio. Some caffe thrown in there as well, as we had to hand in a page of it.

Colour Tams Test

I did a bit more experimenting with cool and warm colours and shadows a couple nights ago; I decided to sketch Tams whilst she worked on her laptop. I found even just focusing on the face, there are endless shades of colour, and different plains to discover....

...and her hair was an interesting element too!

Cooking with Colour...

So these past couple weeks in life drawing, we have been doing costumes with colour... something that is much trickier than it looks!

Colour is definitely a fine art. You should be able to get a Bachelor of Colour. I think they should offer that. Yes, I definitely aspire to be a Colourologist. Mmm-hmm, yes, one day.

Well, here's what I've been cooking up the past couple weeks.... still a loooong way to go, but I am having fun, trying to loosen up a lot more and just throw down colours and see what happens!

Let it flow, joe.

Ya know, some days, [it seems more often than not lately!] in life drawing, I just don't feel it. I push through the 3 hours, but I don't feel it come to me. I know it's inside, I can visualize how I want it to look, but it gets lost in translation on its way through my hand and into the conte!

Yesterday though, I really felt like it was a-flowin'! Plus we had this awesome model who was very caricaturable. I am getting to love costumes!

The tough sessions definitely make you appreciate the good ones!

Class caricatures

This half of the term in life drawing has been awesome - working on caricaturing / caffe drawings when it comes specifically to people - faces, expressions, features, body types... etc. It looks easy [when you see a good drawing!], but to do it well takes a LOT of practice!

Here are some caricatures of people from class - we all took turns posing.
OH, the only rule Bobby gave us was - we had to make all the heads using a peanut shape. Hence the many peanut-esque faces.

I love this stuff, but I know I really need to work on pushing my designs further and expanding my feature varieties. ie, different noses, eyes, mouths, etc. But hey, my life is a constant work in progress - keep on truckin'!

Life drawring portfolio excerpts

This year so far has been rather interesting.... but I can't deny that I have learnt a TON!
And for that, I am thankful.

Here's some pieces from my life drawing portfolio.... there's always room for improvement, but I am happy to just be improving at all!