Excellent Drawing Session

Wow I was in the zone at Wednesday evening's figure drawing session. As always, the group started with sketching several quick 5-minute poses to warm up and to get the mind in drawing mode.

After the 5-minute poses ended, one long pose was chosen for the rest of the drawing session. Here’s were I started feeling in the zone. I had a lot on my mind but was able to maintain focus, I sketched and sketched and felt confident and relaxed with every piece.

I would sketch until I felt the piece was completed, I averaged about 30-minutes per piece. At some point I would look at my drawing and it would just feel completed, I have to listen to this feeling because sometimes I keep drawing and then it has an overworked look. So I would stop, enjoy the drawing for a bit and move my drawing pad to another spot in the studio. Each angle I chose was challenging and well worth the drawing adventure.

It was a successful evening, I learned a lot and I’m looking forward to next Wednesday’s figure drawing session.

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE, GRAPHITE ON PAPER 14" x 17"

Drawing Foreshortening is Fun

This was the long pose for Wednesday night's open figure drawing session at Geiger Studios. We had a male model and this was my view of the model when the pose was chosen, a lot of foreshortening!

Foreshortening is fun and frustrating at the same time. The fun part is in the accomplishment and in the problem solving of drawing the body going away from you while communicating that to the viewer.

The frustrating part is the challenge: drawing the objects closer to me bigger and the drawing the objects farther from me smaller. I know the feet aren’t that big on the model and I know the head arms and hands aren’t that small but I have to let go of reason, make my proportion measurements, and focus on drawing what I see, not what I know about the human body. So I draw the feet bigger because they are closer to me and I draw the head arms and hands smaller because they are farther away from me and trust it will work out at the end, and it does. Visually, this drawing works, you understand a human figure is lying down. It’s so cool.

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE, GRAPHITE ON PAPER 14" x 17"

Portait Drawing of 1980's Teenage woman

This is the other model from Saturday morning's portrait drawing session. The portrait session hires two models for 4 weeks and I spent the 1st three drawing portraits of my friend AJ. On this last session I finally sat in front of this model and made several portrait drawings, she was dressed 1980's style. It was fun sketching her, I wish I had done a painting of her because her outfit was very colorful.

I created the full figured portrait on the right side first in about 40 minutes. I really enjoyed drawing that one, I thought the leg warmers were a good touch. The portrait on the left was 25 minutes, and I created it towards the end of class. It was rushed and you can tell, the eyes on this one aren't right and I lost my highlights on the pupils, so they now look dark and hollow. Lessons learned, I need to make sure I leave a little high light on the eyes.

I still had a great portrait drawing session, the crowd was nice, one of the artists brought Monavie juice drinks that were delicious, and the boom box played a James Taylor live concert recording.

Portrait sketch & drawing of my friend Adrian

I attended the Saturday morning drawing group and my friend AJ was modeling again. This time I feel I created a nice drawing that captures AJ's true likeness. It's never 100% exact but it's what I try to achieve with my drawing style.

I made a couple drawings and I picked these three to post. The drawing on the left took me about 40 minutes to create. Then I created the two quick sketches on the right, about 8-10 minutes each. I wish I had more time to complete these but I like them because you can see my method for drawing a portrait. I quickly sketch the light lines that are horizontal and vertical to help me align features of the face to slowly achieve the likeness I'm looking for.

You can also see circles or ovals, I use them as short cuts to add tone or highlights. I sketch the ovals to quickly block in areas of the portrait that change in gradation. The lamp that provides the light is coming from above so I may quickly sketch an oval on the highlighted area and not add any tone. On the side of the face and bottom, the tone is changing so I'll quickly add ovals with crosshatch lines as tone to block in those areas.

I also add ovals to create a surface plane, giving a feeling of depth. Notice ovals are different from top to bottom, I try to draw them in perspective.

I'm happy with these drawings, I had a good session. A lot of artist showed up, and the jukebox played good music: James Taylor, and Irish fiddle music, which always takes me back to the Pacific North West :).

Female Figure Drawing

Hello everyone, I haven't posted a drawing in a long time. I was on a dry spell but now I'm back and motivated.

I'm right now in Toledo, Ohio with family and I've been attending figure drawing sessions. Here's a figure drawing from last night session that I'm proud of. I had a great time. I was definitely in the zone. The crowd was small, the drawing studio had a good vibe, and the model was focused. O ya, and they played Beatles music :).

This is a really low view, the model was on a tall pedestal, so it has the cool effect of viewing her from the ground up.

I created this figure drawing in graphite on Strathmore Premium drawing paper. It took me about 30 min. I did a lot of proportions measurements and sighting with my pencil for alignment. More to come.