Open life drawing pictures.

I've been drawing at the open life drawing sessions every week, and I'll just say that I was way out of practice. I noticed a lot of lost dexterity and lack of patience in my drawings starting out. But the last two sessions have gone a lot better. I've been trying to work on nailing down proportions, good line weight and value variation, accurate musculature, and accurate values. Most of the poses have been pretty short, rarely over 30 minutes so the value studies are a little harder to come by.



This was an hour pose from last week. There are a few good things going on, but I don't think the value really strengthened the drawing at all. In some areas it makes the forms confusing.



These two are from last week as well. One is a 10 minute pose and the other was 15 or 20.




Here I was just playing around during the 5 minute warm up drawings. All were done in 5 min. except the bottom facial study which was 10.



20 min. pose



30 min. pose



This last one was 45 minutes.

Digital life drawing!

So I decided to take my Wacom to one of the open life drawing sessions here at Stout. I was doing mostly conte on paper drawings all night, but for the last hour or so, after much frustration with the traditional media, I decided to go digital. Each of the above are 5 minutes poses. There are a few things I like about them, but I'm definitely still feeling out the Wacom. Much to learn...

By far the most glorious mustache known to man...

It's so beautiful.



This was a sketch of my summer roommate Dani. She asked me to draw her sometime this summer, and I told her I would do it, but it wouldn't be pretty. I can't wait to show it to her.



Another recent development for me was a little inkage. It took me 4 years to learn to be impulsive.







And lastly, another summer at Valleyfair has come to a close. It was a great season out there. As usual, it was truly a pleasure to work with some amazing artists. These were a few customers that I snapped pictures of on my last day. I was trying not to hold back, but also trying to nail at least one 100% likeness. I think I came close on one or two of them, but there's lots of room for improvements.

Tis a dumpage of sketches.

So I purchased a Wacom Intuos this summer. I always kinda wanted to play around with one, and now I've got it, but no time to work with it. Sad day, I know. Anyway, above is my first all digital sketch. Its about 15 minutes of work. I can see how people would utilize a Wacom as their main tool, however, I can safely say that the bulk of my work will remain in the traditional media.

The rest of these are a few sketches with no order, rhyme or reason.

Mustache confusion

I started collecting pictures of things/people with cool mustaches. I think its going to be a very interesting series of images.



Some Valleyfair junk




This is my latest freelance job. I wish I would have laid on a lot more paint. Oh well. I'll get em next time.

Puppetmasters

Here's yet another illustration for City Hall Magazine. I drew this mainly with Micron pens because my piece of crap nibs were not drawing at all, and it was very frustrating. I started inking it at Valleyfair, and I didn't think to bring spare nibs with me. I did also learn that a semi-decent watercolor job can cover up a semi-crappy inking job.

Caricature Bliss?

This was a really fun family. They sat down and asked to be drawn really exaggerated. What else could a guy ask for?




The guy in this drawing had such a thick neck that it swallowed his chin. I was so excited over it that the only reference to a chin that I put in was a little dab of facial shadow. I lost the likeness a little bit, but I didn't care, I just wanted to draw it exactly as you see it here.