-
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?…
-
My last round of figures for Love Life Drawing triggered the instructor Marek to challenge me to do a value study of a clothed person to demonstrate a fundamental painting technique of dividing the subject into just 2 values. I had taken that literally, dividing the entire scene into 2 values, but he suggested using…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
I have been watching a bunch of Marco Bucci painting lesson videos, particularly his 10 Minutes to Better Painting series. The episode about color notes was particularly inspiring, and then the exercise proposed in this video gave me the impetus to try it out. Additional stylistic input from the apple tutorial contributes to a very…
-
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 Aldori, was especially impressive for walking through techniques I did not have my head around in terms of brush strokes, simplification, and impression. I like the…
-
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…
-
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…
-
I’ve been working on some drawings of Aftyn from imagination — full body poses — and struggling with getting facial likeness at that distance. The eternal struggle! After four disappointing attempts at the target resolution, I decided to draw a close-up with the intention of shrinking it down and drawing over it with a simplified…
-
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…
-
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 butt…
-
Lyra and Aftyn have been a team for a long time. I decided some time ago I wanted to do a portrait of them together. The concept is: what would make for an ideal day for a happy dog? Relaxing and playing with her favorite person. I found the reference for the image on the…
-
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…
-
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…
-
This is a painting of a friend of a friend, who will go unidentified, sitting with a gargantuan sweetheart of a dog, looking out over a misty valley at sunset. The original reference photo was taken in a boring office environment (but they let dogs in, so they can’t be too bad!), but that was…
-
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 —…
-
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…
-
Portrait of actor David Suchet as the great detective Hercule Poirot. That is one of the truly great match-ups of actor to role. His Poirot is a fussy, perfectionist genius. I’ve seen many actors take on the role, but his performance is the first time I felt like I understood the character. I loved the…
Dismal.ink
A place to put my stuff
