Hampton, part 3
My figure drawing work continues. This week’s work spans two segments of the book, so I apologize for the big swing. In these first couple, we’re rounding up the gesture section. Gesture drawings are about curve, animation, capturing the spirit of a movement. These drawings should be fast, and should never look stiff. Mine still...
Hampton, part 2
Learning from Michael Hampton's Figure Drawing: Design and Invention continues with a further 6 pages with of sketches. The book isn't giving work assignments (at least so far), so I'm just following along with his drawings, trying to get a feel for the rhythms and lines. I'm trying to get into the headspace. I feel...
Hampton, part 1
I have started a new book for learning figure drawing. It is Figure Drawing: Design and Invention by Michael Hampton. (The link is to an earlier printing, but I'm sure it's close enough to follow along, if you were so inclined.) I remember learning about Hampton from a Proko YouTube video and being impressed with his...
Study group - shape design 1
This month the Love Life Drawing study group focus is on shapes. Simplifying shapes into CSI curves. Making them feel organic. Some guidelines included making them asymmetric in form and using more obtuse than acute angles. The first exercise was in the three parts. Part one asked us to just make a bunch of shapes on a...
Study group - Figure 5 ways 4
Concluding the Love Life Drawing study group's Figure 5 ways month, we have a series of figure drawings that attempt to synthesize all the lessons. I built these figures in phases, using simple forms, gesture, values, and anatomy to piece together a final rendering. Marek drove a fair amount of this month, and he...
Study group - Figure 5 ways 3
Marek, critiquing my effort from the first week suggested my value study would be improved by focusing on the light shapes instead of the shadow shapes. To achieve that, I started with a darker background and just draw light blobs and tried to scrub them into the right shapes. I did that once before to good effect, but...
Study group - figure 5 ways 2
Our multi-discipline figure drawing month continues. Last week we did a survey of all 5 approaches to figure drawing — simple forms, gesture, anatomy, values, full figure drawing. This week we're focusing just on the first two of those, with some review instructional materials examining those skills in detail. Simple...
Study group - figure 5 ways 1
It's a new month and a new topic for the Love Life Drawing study group. The new topic: drawing the figure with five different approaches. We have practiced each of these, so this acts as a review, a kind of synthesis, and a way of highlighting if any of the stages needs more work. We took a single reference image and...
Study group - head and neck 4
This week's study group exercise instructions went in two very different directions. We could either do last week's rendered heads again, including lessons learned, or if we wanted to elaborate and abstract things, Kenzo included links to some challenging videos about 2d shape design and composition theory. I watched...
Study group - head and neck 3
This week we continue our study of head and neck anatomy by adding in shadow shapes guided by our simplified head shape model. I'm using different references this time around, to keep things fresh. There are a couple celebrities and one Aftyn reference. This was a fun exercise! However, I found it hard to stay in the...
Study group - head and neck 2
My feedback on last week's head drawings was humbling. My proportions were bad, my Loomis shapes were off. Advice basically came down to the idea that I'm not really ready to freehand sketch from reference for this stuff, and I should be doing a tracing stage in between. I've done that before. Draw your ideal abstract...
Study group - head and neck 1
This month, my figure drawing class tackles that great beast: the head. The stated goal here is to push forward our figure drawing — not portraiture. This anatomy unit is not targeting likeness. It is about making a form that is recognizable as a head, and giving it some directionality. Where is the subject looking?...
Study group - weight and balance 4
Another large set of figures for this week's Love Life Drawing study group as we continue with week 4 of the weight and balance unit. This week we turn our attention to figures more at rest than the dynamic one of the last few weeks. I apologize I am once again unable to share the references that go along with this. The...
Study group - weight and balance 3
The Love Life Drawing weight and balance month went a little astray from the topic this week, I think, by focusing on capturing actions and gestural curves. Maybe next week will bring it back together. I'm pretty happy with these figures, though. They don't have quite the flow of gestural masters, but I think each is...
Study group - weight and balance 2
This week the Love Life Drawing study group returns to the figure studies from last week, adding in a sense of draw the verb energy to the drawings. Does that sound vague to you? It felt that way to me! The instructions suggest we're bringing together gesture, anatomy, and form with a big dose of intuition about how...
Study group - weight and balance 1
The Love Life Drawing study group this month is tackling questions of representing weight and balance. Kenzo posted a video some time ago talking about how to find the line of gravity on a figure, and that's the starting point for the week's exercises. In the drawings above, the left column of figures are drawn from...
Painting tutorial with Ahmed Aldoori
Marek, the new instructor at Love Life Drawing, keeps linking to fascinating YouTube painting tutorials, and I'm inspired to try my hand working through them. This one, from Ahmed Aldoori, was especially impressive for walking through techniques I did not have my head around in terms of brush strokes, simplification, and...
Study group - hips & glutes 4
This week we extend our learning of hips & glutes anatomy to anchor some figure drawings. I'm generally pretty happy with the results, even if the shading gives them all a kind of metallic look. I don't fully have the swing of terminator lines yet, but they're not terrible. What I'm happy with is my ability to...
Study group - hips & glutes 3
In the Love Life Drawing study group, we are now ready for the actual anatomy of hips and thighs, albeit a little bit simplified. I think these are some of the best bones I've drawn, and probably the best diagram overall. It's fascinating to me the impact fat has on this area, and the way it accumulates in discrete,...
Study group - hips and glutes 2
LLD study group hips and thighs month, part 2, looking at the front of the figure. This one got pretty concrete about the orientation of the pelvis, something I was pretty weak on before. It also started with those same tapered cylinders for the thighs (AKA conic sections), but then he gave a slightly more detailed...
Study group - hips and glutes 1
New month, new challenge in the Love Life Drawing study group: hips, thighs, and glutes. This is an anatomy topic, but rather than getting into the technical aspects of the bones and muscles, we're starting with basic, simplified forms. The drawings are anchored around the the little triangle formed by the hip bones and...
Weapon of choice
More bad drawings! Better than last time, though, at least. On the left we have a quick sketch of Christopher Walken from that Weapon of Choice music video, drawn from reference. I did that one because I was having trouble picturing what was going on with his hips in the pose and wanted to see if I could replicate it....
Study group - imagination 3
Look, they're not all going to be winners, all right? There's a reason I don't do a lot of drawing from imagination. They're terrible! There are some bits and pieces in here that show promise, I'll admit. But I have a long way to go before I'm at my long-term goal of drawing recognizable people from imagination. I spent...
Study group - imagination 2
These are some rough figures for the Love Life Drawing study group imagination month's second exercise. The first three are drawn from references, but pushed into broad exaggeration. The last figure is just winging it from a very simple gestural stick figure. The line and shade work is pretty sloppy — I was rushing...
Drawings from imagination
Practicing some figure work from imagination. These poses are not copied from anything, they're just me trying to come up with what people look like. Usually when I try this, I make terrible things — stiff and unbelievable. For the most part, I'd say these are not bad. The shadows are shaky, particularly on the...
Study group - imagination 1
This month, the Love Life Drawing study group goes after the one thing that brings everyone anxiety: drawing from imagination. In the first week's exercise, we were to draw a figure from reference, then hide both the drawing and reference and draw it again from memory. Ideally we were to pay attention to how the figure...
Study group - hands 4
The concluding exercise to the Love Life Drawing study group's hands month. We've established the anatomical essence pretty well already. Now the goal is to use light and shadow to call out the subtler anatomical features — fat, tendons, wrinkles, and so on. You can see that my confidence in rendering the hands has...
Study group - hands 3
The Love Life Drawing study group hands exercises continue into section 3, where we're polishing up our fingers. The focus here was on taking the spacial aspect of the knuckles and using that to set the spacing on the fingers. I went ahead and shaded them because I've been impressed with the drawings done by some of the...
Study group - hands 2
The Love Life Drawing study group hands month rolls on. This week we add simplified finger and thumb shapes to the palm box diagram. In last week's exercise post, I included the original references, and I really shouldn't have done that. Those are copyright images, and I don't have permission to share them. So this...
Study group - hands 1
The Love Life Drawing study group subject for March is drawing hands, the bane of many artists. In this first week, the real focus is on learning a simplified shape for the palm box, which is curved on the forward surface along the knuckles, peaking at the middle finger, and usually a little concave on the palm side....
Study group - edges 3
The Love Life Drawing study group exercise of the week addresses using different kinds of lines to communicate different edges in a figure. Honestly, I didn't exactly nail this task. I think my figures look pretty good — all that drilling on figure drawing fundamentals has been paying off. But in terms of the line...
Study group - edges 2
This week the Love Life Drawing study group assignment was to make a variety of kinds of edges. Combinations of fine and wide lines, hard and soft edges, high and low contrast. On the left side, I sketched some more simplified rib cage volumes. On the right side, I tried my hand at replicating the marks from another...
Study group - edges 1
This week, we begin a new unit in the Love Life Drawing study group, focusing on lines and edges. In the first half of the exercise, we were to pick 3 references from artists we admire and examine how they use edges and lines in the composition. In Bill Sienkiewicz's portrait of Bruce Lee, above, the strongest value...
Boobs challenge 10
This is the 10th and last group sheet for my 100 sets of boobs challenge. I switched to pencil shading on this one. I'm not in love with the quality of my rendering. It's not terrible, but I'd like to get it smoother. I am pretty happy with how well the drawings represent the references, though. I was reflecting on this...
Study group - torso 4
More gesture drawings for this week's Love Life Drawing study group exercise. I'm happier with these results than the last one. They are decidedly more gestural, focusing on the flow over detail, informed by just a bit of anatomical features. The poses show some interesting bending, particularly on the middle figure,...
Boobs challenge 9
Page 9 of my boobs challenge series. A bunch of interesting challenges here again. The sketches are getting a little easier now, and this set I think the clothing details work a lot better than on prior sets. As I drew, a line Kenzo said kept popping into my head: Look for excuses to show the forms curve. You can see...
Study group - torso 3
This week in the Love Life Drawing study group, the exercise is to use shading to indicate anatomical features on some gesture drawings. I would say that by and large I did not succeed at that. That guy in the bottom right has some good midriff area, and calling out those little divots above the butt where the pelvis...
Boobs challenge 8
Can you believe we're already up to the eighth set of these? So many wonderful boobs on so many incredible women. I just want to say again to the ladies, thank you for being so incredible and so open. I think this is probably my best set of the series to date. I'm particularly captivated by the one in the upper left,...
Boobs challenge 7
Another sheet full of glorious ladies, back in the basic sketch style. I feel like I'm improving at the construction aspect of these. Each drawing starts with an anatomical anchor point, either the rib cage or clavicles, and builds outward from there. It's the mechanism you use in learning to develop the skill to draw...
Boobs challenge 6
The challenge continues! In part 6 of 10, I went for a more fully painted rendering style. Do I like it? Um, it's complicated. Some of these look quite good — I'm particularly happy with the fabric folds in the dress on the lady in the middle. But I also found myself getting restless with the amount of time each took....
Boobs challenge 5
We've reached the halfway mark on the challenge to draw 100 sets of boobs. I had said on the previous post that I was going to change styles for the next set, but then I didn't wind up with anything in mind when the time came, so I fell back to ink and contours. I have a plan for the next ones, though. I'm back at work...
Study group - torso 2
This week started with a couple corrections and additions to my torso diagram. We've added in the lats (lattisumus dorsi) and erector spinae muscles down the spine. Along with the shoulder musculature, that completes the simplified torso model we're learning. I don't exactly feel like I've got any of this mastered, but...
Boobs challenge 4
This is the fourth entry in my challenge to draw 100 sets of boobs, this time switching to ink shading. And I have to say, I am quite pleased with the quality of the rendering on these. And I think I've done an admirable job representing the subjects. I think this is probably my favorite set so far. A new bar! Who...
Boobs challenge 3
This is the third sheet in my series of boob and torso drawings. I feel like this was a solid set, featuring some very awesome ladies. Nothing feels out of proportion, shading is getting pretty good. Detail where it matters, and less so where it doesn't. The best part is the lady at the bottom left, where you can really...
Boobs challenge 2
Another sheet of women's torsos, as I continue my 100 sets of boobs challenge. I feel like I hit a stride on this set -- nothing is jumping out at me as wrong. I am beginning to feel more confident with the forms involved, soft and malleable as they may be. It is challenging to make them feel symmetrical, something that...
Boobs challenge 1
I keep running into these social media art challenges, like the 100 head challenge, and recently I completed 100 rib cages as part of the Love Life Drawing beginner figure study course. I decided that to reward myself for completing the course, I would do my own challenge — 100 sets of boobs. I love boobs. Everyone...
Study group - torso 1
This month, the Love Life Drawing study group turns its attention to the torso. As usual with the anatomy months, we begin with a diagram. This one lays out a simplified version of the primary bones and musculature that make up the surface-visible features. Most of them, anyway. I got a little creative with the angle on...
Using measurement to improve figure studies
Exercise 9 of the Love Life Drawing beginner figure drawing study asks us to use measurement techniques to improve on the stick figures I was doing before. I have had a lot of trouble applying the standard art measurement tricks in my digital work. Getting a solid measurement on the iPad without accidentally brushing my...
Mountain test
Another discovery in my newly organized media directory, I don't even remember when I did this sketch of a mountain range as a test of ink shading and texturing. It was probably just before doing the Strange Days piece. I remember I got inspired to try by watching one of Alphonso Dunn's videos. Probably this one. You...
Co-drawing session, Nov '22
On a live call with Kenzo and other study group members from the Love Life Drawing forum, we did a session of timed figure studies. The numbers are numbers of seconds per pose. I don't feel like I do a great job of these speed drawings still, and generally don't like the results. The woman at the bottom right looks...
Reclining nude figure study
This is another older item that I neglected to post here. On the Love Life Drawing forums, someone posted their rendition of this figure. I was taken by the pose and wanted to do my version of it. I was still in the mode of tracing simplified shapes over the reference (at the top, in blue) and then doing a freehand...
Lilith revisited
This is another painting of Lilith, from the Love Life Drawing reference series. I did this several weeks ago and apparently just never uploaded it here. At the time I was pretty frustrated by it because I'd set out to make a simplified shapes painting and wound up doing too much detail. Once again, trying to get a...
Stick figures with volume
Lesson 6 in the Love Life Drawing beginner course adds the rib cages and a simple pelvis volume to the stick figures of lesson 4. As before, the exercise asks you to draw a freehand stick figure (these are in brown) near a reference picture, then trace another directly on the reference (in green). When you overlap...
Torso pivots
I mentioned in my stick figure series post two of the poses foiled me, so I set them aside to do more detailed studies. Here they are. The original problem, something many beginner artists experience, is a tendency to straighten out the human torso. I think it's an extension of the symbolic thinking trap described in...
Study group - gesture 4
Kind of a summary week in the last Love Life Drawing study group exercise for gesture month. This series of drawings is more relaxed than any of my previous gesture drawings, which is pleasing. I allowed myself a cleanup pass on the line work, but left the sketch layer visible, in order to not hide my work. I am...
Flag bearer
This was another attempt at a loose painting style, depicting Arthur draping himself in a big, red robe. The goal here is to simplify the figure into larger value shapes, using the minimum of marks to communicate the pose and biological features you want to draw attention to. This one is a lot closer than my last two...
I drew 101 rib cages... and boy are my arms tired
Lesson 5 of the Love Life Drawing beginning figure drawing course asks us to drill on drawing a 3D rib cage volume a hundred times. Until you're kind of sick of it, frankly, Kenzo says. And I am **sick** of it. I spent a week drawing all these. On occasion I got cross-eyed enough I had to draw something else just...
Study group - gesture 3
The Love Life Drawing study group exercise this week was to make gesture drawings of those same 6 figures we've been doing this month with a finite number of marks. The goal is to describe the pose with 12-15 CSI strokes. CSI means the shape each mark should be a C-curve, an S-curve, or a straight line. The numbers you...
Study group - gesture 2
This week in the study group, we were to elaborate on the gestures from last week by adding in some secondary information about the pose from the arm/shoulder areas. Kenzo's description of the intent seemed clear enough, but when I got into execution, I felt like I lost that focus on secondary cues. Like, maybe I...
Stick figures
Lesson 4 of the Love Life Drawing beginner life drawing course is to draw stick figures. I drew lots of stick figures. The set above, my last for this lesson, represents a pretty good success, but let's come back to that one in a moment. At first I was drawing stick figures on top of reference pictures, really just a...
Study group - gesture 1
This month the Love Life Drawing study group is focusing on gesture drawing, a topic I have only danced around in the past. In the first exercise, Kenzo outlined some techniques for identifying the surface features that can describe how to find the rib cage and pelvis volumes. The clearest landmark on the chest is the...
Motion lines
I've started doing the Love Life Drawing first steps course. You might think I'd be past that point by now, but I really don't think I am. There's a unit on rib cage volumes that I think will be really helpful to my visualization skills. I'm planning to spend about a week per lesson in the course. These motion lines...
Study group - shoulders 4
Figure drawings with an emphasis on shoulders. This one felt like it got out of control. I don't know. It's messy. Looking on the bright side, though, my line work has improved -- not a lot of erasing on this -- and the figures mostly look pretty good. Something went real bad on that third figure's face though.
Study group - shoulders 3
Shoulders month continues with us now expanding into some figure drawing, either full figures as with the above set, or bits and pieces as you'll see below. I'm pretty happy with all of them, to be honest. I feel like I've loosened up my line a bit which has allowed me to make more organic looking outlines. In the above...
Study group - shoulders 2 (sort of)
I don't have a post from the study group to show this week. That's my fault. We had an assignment, trying to identify parts of shoulder anatomy from a series of these photo references. I didn't freehand the assignment this time; I traced directly on the references. The rights on those photos don't allow me to share...
Study group - shoulders 1
This month the Love Life Drawing study group begins examining the anatomy of the shoulder, kicking off with some simple diagrams. We did a little live session where Kenzo went over these features. This is simplified to just the things that you will generally be able to see from the outside, and therefore can be used to...
Study group - simple forms 4
Study group work continues with a sheet of poses in 3 figures each. The simple forms poses, using contour lines to show the volumes are on the left in blue (or is that purple?) I'm using the same poses from last week, but I cleaned up the poses some. In particular, that third pose -- Naomi is her name -- needed work. I...
Study group - simple forms 3
Catching up from my unproductive vacation. I only had time for a few quick gesture sketches. The focus here is using contour lines to highlight the volume of each form, with a bunch of foreshortening tossed in to make it hard! These look pretty decent -- with a cleanup pass they'd look solid. I'm happier with the calves...
Study group - simple forms 2
I'm on vacation this week, so this will be quick. We are continuing to draw simple forms this week, with a focus on finding those shapes in a human body. The above gesture drawings have cross contour lines to help show the volumes in the form. The first gesture was made trying to study the style of Michael Hampton. It's...
Study group - simple forms 1
This month we're going back to basics. Building up a shape from simple forms. Challenges this week were to look for cylindrical things to draw. I made a little tableau on my desk of things from around the house. The pose dummy was fun to have in there. Playstation controllers turn out to be very hard to draw! In my...
Study group - arms 4
Week four of the focus on arm anatomy concludes with gesture drawings that concentrate on using musculature to guide shadow shapes and the curves in the form. I did two passes on each of these forms. The orange set was my starting set, just looking at the references, and the blues are from looking more closely at...
Study group - arms 3
Light week. I spent most of the week doing some painting, rather than focus on these exercises. But class rolls on! The goal of the week was to combine some of the learning from anatomy into some gesture studies. So here we're paying attention to how the bones and musculature contribute to asymmetric curves and give...
Study group - arms 2
Beginning a new month introduces two new of the month subjects. This month, hippos and a new reference model named Jade. Both I did as value studies, trying to improve my facility with that kind of analysis. I like how the water and reflections turned out despite the simple marks. The above picture is of some pygmy...
Study group - arms 1
This week we started on arm anatomy, focusing on the 3 main arm bones -- the humerus (upper arm, green), the radius (forearm, blue), and ulna (forearm, red). Kenzo gave a little demo of how the joints work and what happens with the forearm bones during supination and pronation. We then had an assignment to impose bone...
Study group - values 4
This week, the name of the game is value studies. That is, blocking in the broad shadow and light shapes in the drawing. Shadow and light are how we understand 3D volume in a 2D image, so getting them right has major impact on a picture's believability. In the first set of exercises, we are doing just 2 values. What is...
Study Group - values 3
We had a pretty straightforward exercise this week in the study group. We were to arrange a still life with interesting shadows and do a value study of it. I chose some water bottles as my subjects, setting them on my driveway, where you can get some softer shadows from the pergola as a comparison. You also get some...
Study group - values 2
Exercises from week 2 of the Love Life Drawing study group. We continue to work on value simplification, this time with photo reference. The previous week, working from John Singer Sargent paintings, we had the benefit of an artist having already simplified the messy world into a composed work; we just further reduced...
Study group - values 1
This week I started with the Love Life Drawing study group program. Each month we will focus on a particular skill with guided exercises, feedback, and QA sessions. This month the goal is learning about value reduction — simplifying the shapes of light and dark that make up an image. Control of value has a great deal...
Pose of the month, Aug 22
This is my rendition of the Love Life Drawing August pose of the month. I was working on value simplification at the time, hence the very simple shadowing. But I think that wound up looking pretty good, particularly on the drape over the stool. The only part I'm unhappy with here is that dark black outline -- I probably...
Low angle poses, part 6
This week I'm closing out the set of low angle poses from the Love Life Drawing reference library. It's been fascinating to work with these, and I think I can see real improvements in my drawing from the beginning to the end. My contour shading continues to improve, although I'm still not doing a lot to define multiple...
Sketch daily 2
Another round of 5-minute sketches of figures from SketchDaily. I spent a lot of time focused on the clothing here, probably to the detriment of my goals. That's an option you can toggle. Next time I'll probably pick to do nudes; I'm still working on basic anatomy. That said, I think these show improvement over the last...
Low angle poses, part 5
We're getting closer to the end of the 25 low angle pose set from Love Life Drawing. Mostly I'm still working on my ink contour shading, which I'm getting happier with as we go. The above drawing I did as a value study with black holding lines. I've struggled with picking values in the past, but these I think look...
Low angle poses, part 4
Another week of figure studies. Some of these are using figures sketched over the reference, and some are entirely freehand. I am getting happier with my results on the forms. As for shading, some are more successful than others. I decided this week that I vibe more with less contrast than more, despite the above...
Sketch daily 1
I tried something new today for a speed drill. I used the SketchDaily reference site to limit myself to 5 minutes per figure. I haven't done much pure gesture work, which is what this kind of thing demands. I don't really hate any of the body proportions I've got in here, which is a lot of what that skill stresses. That...
Speed drill 6
Another round of speed drill drawings. Today's exercise was a bit of a trade. I didn't go very fast, but I don't hate either drawing. Can't win 'em all, right? The usual things are still challenges: foreshortening, lips, hands, curly hair. But they're both recognizable as their subjects.
Speed drill 5
I slept through the time I would have spent doing speed drills last Friday. I was crazy tired! I find myself hesitating before doing these. Part of me doesn't like to see what I draw when I know it's going to look bad. But I think that's part of getting to the good ones. I started pretty bad today, and you can see that...
Low angle poses, part 3
Practice with the low angle figure drawing continues. I was mostly doing sketches this week. You might think that's me taking a shortcut, but with the refinements to shading styles I'm trying out, they usually take longer than the simplified paints. I'm starting to like my ink shade results. Where you see the capsule...
Speed drill 4
Kenzo of the Love Life Drawing community hosted a session today focused on improving our line quality. So I was trying to focus on that, but my crappy, hairy line work still comes out. I expect eventually I'll get confident enough in the shapes I'm drawing that I don't feel compelled to check partway through each line...
Low angle poses, part 2
Partway through this week, I began to feel the despair, like maybe I'm not really improving by doing these figure studies. What I've been doing is freehand sketching a figure, overlaying it on the original reference to see how close I got, correcting some things, and then doing clean-up and shading passes. What I wasn't...
Speed drill 3
A third round of speed drills, back on DrawMe. You tend to get a bunch of facial close-ups on DrawMe, figures on DrawMeNSFW. Both are valuable, so I'm planning to jump back and forth. I think only one of today's drawings is a total disaster, and number 4 I think is quite good. I'll put that in the win column!
Speed drill 2
Another round of speed drills, this time on Reddit's DrawMeNSFW, which is a good place to find a variety of figure models. This was again allowing myself 1 hour to do as many drawings as I can at a reasonable level of quality. I think this set turned out better than my first, but I also only got to 4 of them. And I was...
Speed drill
They say the key to improving your art is doing a bunch of it. Fill your sketchbooks! They also say you'll learn more by doing several figures in an hour than spending that time on a single figure. So, I've decided to start a regular sketching drill. I give myself an hour and draw everyone I see on one of the DrawMe...
Dynamic and low angle poses
I finally got to the end of the dynamic pose set from Love Life Drawing. Well, the end of the unclothed dynamic pose set. There's a clothed set as well, mercifully smaller than the 25 in this set, but I figured I'd try a different library for a follow up. I've been working on sketching and ink shading a bunch this week,...
Dynamic poses, part 4
Figure study work continues apace. I did more of these as sketches this week than paintings. I'm working on trying to express different values with simple ink marks. You can see a few different techniques at work in this piece. Most of it is decent, although I don't think I communicated the lighting on his chest very...
Dynamic poses, part 2
Another week of figure studies from the Love Life Drawing dynamic set. I feel like I'm making some improvements. I continue to experiment with painting and sketching styles as I work through these. I have found that I like the pictures more as I refine the number of values I choose for light and shadow. On some, such as...
Dynamic poses, part 1
This week I continued with the Love Life Drawing figure studies. They keep adding new references. I may never catch up! I've been finding the sketch results more aesthetically pleasing than the painted ones, which tells me I need more practice at the paints. Simplification with paint... how do you do it?...
Christy, part 2
Continuing the rapid painting series with Christy. I find myself trying out slightly different techniques in each picture, searching for what will and won't work for me. I haven't been zooming in and applying detail to the faces, and it hurts to do. I hate every one of these faces. They don't look a thing like him and I...
Christy, part 1
Following that 10 day Fresh Eyes figure drawing class, I wanted to keep going with the practice. Kenzo has posted over 100 reference images of models in carefully chosen poses on the Love Life Drawing community website. I decided I would try to do quick-ish (less than 2 hour) paints of as many as I could stand, on the...
Fresh eyes challenge, part 2
The second week of the Fresh Eyes Challenge took us out of the 2D realm and into the third dimension! Kenzo picked poses designed to emphasize foreshortening and rotations of body parts. In the exercises, we were to mark out the rotations using cross contour lines, the circles around the centers of the forms. I've...
Fresh eyes challenge, part 1
I have just completed the Fresh Eyes Challenge that was run by Kenzo of Love Life Drawing, a 10 day series of lessons in how to get started breaking down the human form to capture gesture-style drawings. Kenzo is an excellent instructor, and I loved doing the course. Am I a pro now? Of course not. But I have much better...
Rough figure sketch
For the tiny scrap of time I was about to get in tonight, I don't hate this at all. Ink shading is starting to make some progress. The figure work isn't a disaster. Her face and hair read as a face and hair. I am back from my trip, but things are still crazy. I'm not getting as much time for creativity as I was, but I...
Profile portrait
Profile portrait drawn for the book Drawing in the Right Side of the Brain. It was supposed to be a life study, but a combination of doing this during the pandemic and my inability to use the viewfinder device led to me drawing this from photo reference instead. I picked a stock photo from Pexels. The original model is...
