Bones

After a week in California without internet I am anxious to finish posting all the pieces from my figure drawing class. This was done on the first and second class periods and took somewhere around 4 or 5 hours. The background was shaded at a later date and probably added another hour or two, I have been liking the use of small straight lines going in different directions to create not only the tone, but also some texture. I think it turned out well, and gave me confidence in my drawing ability, of which I was worried about not being able to compete with the rest of the intermediate drawing students. I think I held my own.

19x24 graphite on bristol

Two more paintings

Today was my last finale, and I picked up all my portfolios. Yay for spring break!

Here are my two finale paintings.

The first painting was a study for the finale project and was finished in two hours. I learned a lot by doing this project. I am usually a pretty slow painter, mostly because I don't feel entirely confident in my abilities. This helped me to make decisions quickly and mix colors quickly.

16x20 oil
  

And here is the finale 18x24

Attrocities of Art

I don't post everything I do. Some things are just too boring or horrid to put up on the internet for anyone to see. So I have some restraint... (but not much)

There are three pieces in particular that I did this term that are not very good, and I cringe when I look at them. I had no intention of publishing them, until I realized that all of these failures had actually taught me a lot, and in each case it improved my drawing ability, or my understanding about different media.

Against my better judgment here they are.


This term I found using pencils to be too time consuming to get everything down, so I mostly used charcoal for in class models. This allowed me to quickly lay down a mid town, put in some darks and erase to pull out some highlights.

I was really liking charcoal and I felt I should experiment more with different types to see what I liked or disliked. On this particular day I pulled out a white piece of charcoal and went to town. What resulted was a muddy gray mess of confusion. I learned that just because you have all these different kinds and colors of charcoal doesn't mean you have to jam them all into one piece.

In this second piece came from the same day as the one above. It was a very off day, but informative! In this piece I am using that horrible white charcoal, and toned paper. Which this was my first time using toned paper. The papers tone is suppose to be your mid tone. This time I didn't blend the white and black together, but left them seperate. The only problem is that the white is just out of control, and the black is like midnight. I lost all control of gradation and tone... and once again it just becomes a mess...

 

On this day I left the white charcoal and toned paper behind, and just opted for the standard old charcoal. It was during this drawing session that I realized my use of charcoal was just too elementary. From this piece I learned that I need to try to figure out how to have better gradations of tone. This drawing I think has actually made me better. After this I really tried to figure out how to get more out of my charcoal drawings.

Gestures

I had posted a while back some of my gesture drawings. I am not usually into posting my gestures because I think for the most part I seem to fail at capturing anything that resembles human in the short 1-5 minute sketches.

But since my last set of gestures I seem to have latched onto something and my gestures are looking more like they should. Unfortunately just when I was starting to get comfortable with my sketches we stopped doing them, and I don't think I will be taking another drawing class till next fall. I was going to take a drawing class in Spring, but I have been convinced to take two art history courses instead. Otherwise my fall term could kill me... but really we dont need to go into any of it.

 

 

White Objects

Ever tried to paint a still life filled with nothing but white objects, and a white sheet as a background?

It is... to say the least, a challenge. Especially for someone who has little to no experience painting. I must say that doing this exercise taught me a ton about value and color mixing. The subtle shades of white eggs, sea shells, animal skulls, and cups are hard to capture.

I think I was successful in my rendering of the scene.

The Dark Tower Theme Park (Revisited)

By far the most popular pages on this blog are the Blaine the Mono drawing, and the Dark Tower Theme park. I get 5 - 10 hits a day just for those drawings. Not that people are searching out these drawings in particular but rather they are searching certain key phrases for the dark tower and they eventually stumble onto these in google image search. I am not complaining Ill take traffic however I can get it.

So I did a Google search of the key phrases used to find my drawings to see how far back people had to dig, and I was pleasantly surprised.

When searching:
 - "Blaine the Mono" - The first two pages have my drawings on them
 - "Dark Tower Theme Park" - The first thing that comes up is my drawings (yay!)
 - "Stephen King Blaine the Mono" - Images in the first row
 - " Dark Tower Park" - First row or two
 - "The Dark Tower" - I have yet to find my drawings, I think I got bored after page sixteen thousand. How anyone finds my stuff from this search is beyond me... I mean they must have a ton of time to blow.

So, since I do get so many wandering dark tower fans, and since I changed the drawing to be closer to what I had originally envisioned. I feel an overwhelming urge to make sure people are seeing the better more complete version. There are a few things that still bug me, but I am never going to change them, so I am putting it behind glass and I am calling it done. Perhaps sometime in the future I'll revisit this idea, but it will have to be a completely new drawing. This version is done.

Finished Dark Tower Theme Park Drawing:

 

Old Version:

The Calla was finally added with the rivers off to the left

and the front gate was spiffed up a little bit

Still Life Paintings

Finally a weekend where I am not inundated with work! Here are a few still life paintings from the beginning of the term. They aren't very exciting but what can you do? Ill have more exciting stuff to put up as the weekend goes on.

Self Portraits

Wow, five posts in one day, I went insane! I blame the craziness on my advanced age. I usually like to space the posts out, but I guess I just wanted to get them posted. There will be a slew of a few more when I get my paintings back, and my midterm portfolio for life drawing.

I usually have a hell of a time trying to draw myself. These aren't by any means perfect, I can see where I need to pay more attention, but I think these are pretty successful. I know I am pretty proud of them. I was so pumped while I was drawing them because things were just falling into place for me. I kept leaving the room just so I could walk in again to make sure they were actually looking like me.

I had been really nervous about drawing myself so I practiced drawing smaller versions of these every night. So when it came to getting them done I felt like I already knew the measurements and rhythm of the lines. Especially the second one, those lines evolved, Maybe Ill try to dig out a few of those.

(shoot only have one of my drawing pads, oh well)

 Here is the final drawing:

One of my practice pieces for the more dramatic piece.

Close up of the left panel.

Close up of the right panel

This is my favorite part of the right panel. I love the evolution this line went through in all my drawings.

another practice piece.

Dual Model

There were two drawings from this session, but the other one was turned in with my midterm. This one is less good than that one, but neither are stellar. These poses were an hour long and we were responsible for adding in as much environment detail as possible. I think I almost got that second chair in!

Little Man

Our first model in life drawing was a man. I had had troubles drawing men in the past, and my last life drawing class was during sometime in 03 or 04. There were a lot of bad attempts. This one turned out ok. I can't remember how long the pose was, half hour, an hour? oh well.

Liboon!

Our first project in life drawing was to take two animals skeletons and fuse them together (or take an existing animals skeleton and draw its skeletal or muscular system as an overlay to an Illustration of that animal).

I chose to take a baboon head and stick it on a lion. Hence Liboon!... so clever!

I kept most of the cats structure true to form, its in the shoulder, neck, and head that I morphed the baboon in.

Life Drawing: Gestures

Happy Birthday to me!

So I have some work to post from my life drawing class. We just turned in our midterm portfolio so some pieces are missing which also means I can't post them in a chronological order, but whatever. Also, I think I am going to put each piece into a separate post.

I think I will start with some gestures.
I usually have a pretty horrible time with gestures, it is almost down right embarrassing how they look, but these have a pretty good energy to them and I think for the most part they read well.

A digital practice piece

I don't have a tablet so I draw with my mouse (or practice drawing with my mouse). This is just a picture a friend took and I tried to sort of mimic it. The body is out of whack but in the original picture the body is almost impossible to even see. I took some liberties with buildings, trees, and sky in mine.

The picture isn't completed but it has been in this state for at least a month, so I think perhaps by default that means its done. At least for the time being.

Original:

Mine:

My First Drawing Classes

Ok I found them! So here they are. Sorry for the quality of the pictures some are blurry (I'll have to retake these photos someday). All of these drawings came from two classes: Beginning Drawing and/or Figure Drawing, from Lane Community College in 2004.

First real drawing, all things before this were exercises in how to draw, or to assess the abilities of each student.

 Bone Drawing two

 Still Lifes

 First Attempt at self portrait. In this project we were asked to draw ourselves completely by memory and without first taking a quick look in a mirror (almost as "good" as my first attempt at painting myself lol).

 Second Attempt at a self portrait, what I love about this one is that for some reason I have my shirt off. Which, is completely out of character. I mean I don't even take off my shirt to shower. I must have been channeling my father in this portrait.

As far as the drawing goes, I will say that the likeness is better in this one. This was the final project for beginning drawing.

 My first time experimenting with charcoal, and trying to draw someone besides myself.

 Second Attempt at drawing other people. I have no idea if they look anything like the people I was trying to draw, but for the sake of my self esteem I say they are perfectly replicated! That bottom one, looks like the guy from BladeRunner, pretty sure he didn't model for us, but I can't say one way or another.

First Attempt at Drawing a pregnant woman. Also my first attempt at drawing a whole body.

 Obviously I felt bad about my attempt at drawing a body so I once again went back to just drawing faces.

 Oh man.....I should really just ignore that this one exists. I must have been having an off day. Or maybe my hand was tired from the first drawing of her.

 3rd drawing of the model. The mouth is a little screwy but I am glad I got back on track after that last drawing. Not sure how long each drawing took, but all three were done within one class period.

Oh wait, there is a fourth. You can see I attempted to sketch the body. I wish I would have done more full bodies of this model. I don't think I realized that I had to keep trying, and failing, to get anywhere. The body is way out of proportion and I probably felt like I sucked, but I should have tried harder.

I don't know, I had problems with drawing male bodies. I know this is only the head, but I actually left out the first male drawing (besides myself because I am a man damn it!!!), the one I left out is... too awful, this is actually super good compared to that horrible train wreck. I get better though.

I actually like this drawing, It kind of reminds me of something from an Alan Moore comic, perhaps "From Hell" or "The League of Extraordinary Men"

I also like this one. My only wish is that I had taken more time to finish it properly. 

I know another head shot. Trust me the bodies are coming... (sort of) but I was really focused in on trying to get heads correct. I thought that the most important thing was to draw a face and get the likeness right. Then the body could be really an afterthought.

I think I was doing what I felt comfortable doing, and it made sense to me at the time. I know now that even if you get a facial likeness down, having that head on a gumby body doesn't do anything but make the whole drawing crappy with a decent head.

You can see that I am starting to attempt bodies again. I remember this model very well, she sat in for I think about a week, maybe two weeks. She was fairly old (the above head is hers) and for some reason I got so fascinated with the texture of her skin. I didn't really want to draw bodies but I remember feeling inspired to explore. There was just so much texture and... I don't know.. history or something. LOL that sounds stupid, but it helped me get on track. 

more of the lady

I fucking ruined this drawing. I really loved it until I put that stupid, f-ing, weird, wave thing at the bottom... ugh... but at least the old lady got me inspired to draw bodies. I should go back and just darken the whole bottom.... I wish I could visit my old '04 self and kick myself in the ass.

 Look at that another full body! I wonder what the old lady model would say if she knew she was the person who gave me the confidence to start tackling the human figure. LOL, I bet as a model you don't really think you inspire or have any effect on the people who are drawing you. Maybe it would make her feel good. Hopefully she is well.

For some reason, I got into these boxes all of a sudden... everything became about being in a box, almost comic book like areas of focus.

More boxes. I actually revisited this drawing and fixed it up. Colored the background and put it in my art show.

 Look at this a body shot instead of a head! Someone's practicing!

This woman looks sort of manly in the facial construction. My fault not hers.

Here are some gestures. I think the poses were twenty or thirty seconds, the darker ones, were maybe two to five minute poses. I remember this exercise helping me so much with feeling loose and confident in getting that body shape down on the page.

 ugh...

Here's another drawing that I like. I felt pretty good with these. Especially the big one that is facing down.

So the pregnant lady came back after she had her baby. What I found out is that it is really difficult to draw babies. It ended up looking more alien than baby. I felt like a failure. Just when I was feeling good about my drawing skills this stupid baby came in and F-ING ruined it! I wonder how the baby would feel if it realized it ruined me. (I say it because I can't remember if it was a girl or a boy, I think a girl but who can be sure, really?)

Here's a drawing I wish I would have finished. I have no idea why it isn't more finished, perhaps I had to leave, or I was sick or who knows, but I think I had something going with this one.

 hmmm... look at that perspective drawing!

The old man came back and I dissected pieces of him and put them in boxes... I like this drawing and toyed with putting it in the art show instead of the other one, but I felt the other one was more interesting... Plus, I had that idea to add color which I thought was going to be really cool (and still do think it's cool).