Imaginism Workshop Day 3

Sadly, Bobby and Kei had to leave for Toronto today. I~ve only met them face to face 3 days ago, but it seems like way way longer. Since T drove them to the airport, we were left in the very capable hands of T~s assistant, Diana.

We played figure drawing charades and practised some other life drawing exercises. I mentioned that I had trouble draw sexy women, and it turns out that~s one of the things that Diana loves to draw most. She gave me a few pointers, and now drawing women is part of my daily exercise routine.

Some of Diana~s examples

My First Attempt

For some reason green felt like a good idea

Last Study of the Day

Mighty Good Sketches 4/19/14

Here's the sketches from this week's session of life drawing at mighty good coffee.

Life Drawing at Mighty-Good 3/29/14

Here are my Saturday life drawings at Mighty-Good Coffee. It took a month or so, but I've finally found the best place to sit for optimal lurking.

Thank goodness for hipsters with interesting glasses and denim jackets. They're just plain fun to draw. However, his hand was so bad that I've decided to do an intense hand study for a couple of months. (I'll do a separate post on that though).

These are both of the same guy. He must have been working on his thesis, because he was clearly hating life. After drawing him the first time, I was thinking about his eyes. They're a decent short hand, and I don't think that they look bad. However, they're very similar to all of the eyes that I've been doing when drawing from life lately. My subject clearly wasn't leaving anytime soon so I drew him again. This time, I wanted to try using a different type of eye that was more expressive. I don't think it's enough for me to draw a picture of a person that doesn't look bad anymore. I need to start adding feeling and story.

On a side note, I do him a great disservice. He didn't have man-boobs like this in real life. They were the result of an errant mark that I made and liked when I was doing the initial pencil sketch. Sorry moob-man. 

That's it for now. Hand studies and more Spreepo stuff coming soon.

DC, signing off.

Life Drawing at Mighty Good: Are you really sucking more than usual today?

Have you ever had one of those days where everything you draw just isn't that good? It doesn't necessarily suck, but it's just not up to snuff. Maybe it happens at the best possible time. Like when you're drawing in front of you friends, or even better, in front of a bunch of curious strangers. It's so tempting to say "I swear I'm good! Or at least, better than this!"

I had a day like that yesterday. It got me thinking about something I had heard in Chris Oatley's ArtCast ( http://chrisoatley.com/category/podcasts/ ). Chris Mentioned that students and new budding artists seem to be more afraid of or even paralyzed by failure. 

I admit that I'm guilty of this. It took me a year to get around to drawing a 3 page teaser for my comic idea. All because I knew that if I started right then it wouldn't be good. There is so much to learn right?! I have at least 10 great books about the best way to layout your panels, and another 3 about proper story telling. Oh yeah, then there's that great podcast about character development. Wouldn't it be hasty, or even irresponsible of me to start before I learn all I can about it first?

I think this mindset is a product of two things.

First- There are two types of artistic growth that are necessary to "level up." The first is an increase in skill....duh. Ok, that's a little obvious, but the second is the ability to discern when something is right or wrong. This is analogous to a chef refining his/her palette to detect when flavor of their meal isn't quite there yet. Maybe the soup needs some more salt and a bay-leaf. Or, a musician's ability to detect when they're flat or sharp, or slightly out of time. Artists go through the exact same process. I think the ability to dissect your work is necessary to consistently improve and deliver. The feeling I was having was do to growth in the second type of learning that exceeded my skill in the first.

Second- The internet. Yes, let's blame everything on the internet. My dog sheds everywhere. That's the internet's fault too.

I think that the fear that Chris mentions is a vicious cycle between these two things. The internet is so accessible and chalk full of tutorials that we can research art forever without putting pencil to page. This, in turn, increases our ability to discern good art way above our ability to make it. We'll start a piece and immediately think that it's terrible. So what do we do? Go straight back to the internet, because we haven't learned enough yet to attempt the piece that we started. 

Around and around we go.

So, what should I do to beat this thing? Well, I went to the internet. (Irony noted). Everything I found told me to just do the damn thing no matter what it is. Turn my internal editor off. (He's an ass hole anyway). Looking at art on the internet only increases that second type or skill. Putting pen to paper will increase the first one.

So, here are my life drawings from yesterday. Not perfect, but at least they're done. 

I also have the first page of pencils finished for my comic. I'll throw those up later today and prove that I'm not a total hypocrite. At least, not all of the time.

Sneaky Sketches at MightyGood: Round One

This was a great week for finding new resources for illustration. I stumbled upon Chris Oatley and Noah Bradley's websites and podcasts, which are all about creating comic books and the business of freelance illustration. Many of their talks can be found on youtube as well.
http://chrisoatley.com/
http://www.noahbradley.com/artcamp/
They also both host art schools of their own. One day soon, I'll attend and post about them here.

I also found Will Terrell's youtube channel. Among other things, Will is a fantastic Caricature artist. His channel is filled with great life lessons, art pointers and demos of his own sketchbook. He has a very bubbly personality that is just plain fun to listen to. I couldn't help but to smile.

In one of his videos' he recommends trying out a midtone sketch book. I picked one up yesterday and tested it out by sneakily drawing the patrons at Mighty Good Coffee. It's a great way to unwind before starting your weekend OT.

This man gazes sorrowfully into the distance. They ran out of scones....

This guy was contentedly doing his weekend sudoku.

I'm new to drawing moving targets, but this was a fun exercise. I'm going to do this every Saturday from here on out. I can't wait for the next one.

Gesture Drawing Week 5: Exaggeration

The fifth week of  gesture drawing focuses on exaggeration. The soul of this segment is: communicative accuracy > anatomical accuracy.This is a slightly confusing lecture because the lecturer Alex indirectly advocates rotating the model to maximize the idea of the pose, while Louis (who gives the critiques) advises against this.

On the surface this lecture was straight forward. If the model is slouching, then make them REALLY slouch. If they are reaching for something, make the arm a little longer to add emphasis to what it's doing. The second level complexity is to put yourself in the model's mind. For instance, if the model looks sad, then you need to think about which gestures convey sadness. Maybe it's turning the face down, or maybe it's to slouch the shoulders forward dejectedly. Adding these little details can help communicate not only what your character is doing, but also what they're feeling. This sounds like a pretty useful to to me at least.

The homework for this lecture was:
1. One hours worth of drawing using exaggeration to convey the idea of the pose
2. Draw the gestures for the second video in the lecture
3. Pick any animal and draw it focusing on the anatomy.

Here is my submission to the homework. For the third part, I chose squirrels.

A short aside from Schoolism

So, I've been at this for a couple of months and have so far spent approximately $1400 on schoolism courses. It feels kind of strange to talk about money so blatantly, but I figure that it's an important topic for you the reader if you're considering trying these courses yourself.

You're probably wondering "is it worth the cost?" "Are you getting better?"

So, I thought you'd be interested in some of non-schoolism work. This way, you can decide for yourself whether or not I'm improving.

Here are some life drawing sessions from the past week or so.



Life Drawing at Mighty Good Coffee ~Ball Point Pen

Life Drawing at Work ~Ball Point Pen

In fairness, I should note that I am not working on Schoolism alone. I'm also spending a significant portion everyday work on Bridgeman's Guide to Constructive Anatomy and Assorted books by Andrew Loomis.