I’ve still been keeping up with the life drawing, despite the fact that I have posted very little over the past month. However, here are my most recent attempts at life drawing.

He wore a hat for this one... oh and used a cane.

I am going to sit down soon and start drawing on the computer again, I’m not going to lie, the thing which has been keeping me away is the Harry Potter books. I’m on the last one now, once I’m done I’ll get some more posts up.

Also, I think I am going to begin putting my stuff up on www.deviantart.com as well.

Life Drawing - 15 minute

Tonight I went to my second life drawing class, and unlike the last time I had a good time. Instead of one static pose for 3 hours we did a whole bunch of warm up sketches (2 min poses) that I did on rough paper with conte.  In the last hour we did one 25 minute pose and 2 15 minute ones. The above picture was my very last of the evening and my favorite by far.

I focused on proportion (except her left right arm), and line quality. I didn’t want to worry too much about lighting or trying to create a beautiful piece of art. I wanted to pose to have weight and a bit of life. I’m really pleased with how I did for my second ever class, and I am looking forward to next week.

Edit: So I screwed up my left and right…big deal.

Wow, I have taken lots of time off.

I didn’t work on either of my two last pieces since I posted them. I’ve been trying to really wind myself down. I’m back to work from my wonderful vacation and I intend to start drawing some more again. I’ll be going to my second life drawing class this Wednesday and I think I’ll make sure to post at least 1 drawing from the session.

A quick 10-15 minute rorschach sketch

After I finished my last post I opened up Illustrator and was hacking away, I was actually really pleased where this was going, but since I have to work in the morning I cut my work short. I may pick it up again after I finish the chubby Batman, but I thought I should post it.

Worked on this for a couple of hours today, I drew up an initial line drawing, but decided I wanted to paint it instead, just for the added challenge. It’s a work in progress, but I think it’s coming along.

I’m hoping to finish it tomorrow if I get a chance.

Sorry for the lack of posts, Christmas/family visiting has kept me busy.

Spawn

I was able to get something out of my digital pen that I was somewhat proud of. It can be pretty tough when things just aren’t feeling right, but after some struggling today I finally put this down.

Pretty happy with the inital sketch, the colouring job was a quick rush job, but I just wanted some basic colours to enhance the piece.

Mainly I just needed to finish something to keep my sanity.

Despite the fact that I haven’t posted anything in the last week, it doesn’t mean I’ve not been drawing.

Life Drawing

I went to my first life drawing class last Wednesday, it was a little awkward at first, but I got over it and worked on some drawings. However, I think my ideas of what I was going to take from the session got muddled and I focused on too many things at once. While I was working out proportions/angles/form I started worry about laying down my value and ways of indicating my dark and light areas.

I got pretty frustrated with myself but I’ll definitely be going back. I need to spend some time focusing on what I want to get out of a session and how to achieve that best.

I was debating whether or not to post them because of their content, but I didn’t draw anything crude so I think I’ll post them only to track my progress. I may have to bind 2 scans though because it was on big paper.

The Green Goblin

I also spent some time on a Green Goblin pic, at first I went for a complete digital painting trying to avoid the black outlines. That didnt’ work as well as I wanted so I started a more cartoony version, and while it was getting close I didn’t feel good about it, so I’ve yet to finish it.

I may leave it all together and move onto something else.

This post was more for my sake than yours, I wanted to spend some time reflecting on the last week and why I haven’t had any decent output.

Kevin Keele's Elf...

Note: The above image was not created or altered by me but was created entirely by Kevin Keele and borrowed from his blog.

http://beawesome.blogspot.com/2007/12/woodsy-elf-making-of.html

In my reply to a friendly comment about my previous post I mentioned that I used an effects layer with a low opacity and colour gradients to get some of the shading/lighting on my Louis drawing.

The above link is where the idea came from, an artist named Kevin Keele. He does a lot of exaggerated portraits which are pretty cool. The linked post is helpful because it gives a way of thinking about colouring in layers as opposed to a straight painting. While certainly people are able to create those effects using only a single layer (or canvas) this allows you to get a nice effect in a short amount of time.

I found it helpful, I hope you do as well.

Enjoy.

Louis from Left 4 Dead

If you haven’t had a chance to try this game, I highly suggest you do, I could write an essay on why this is such a good game, but that would be for another blog, however I tend to play as Louis, the idea of a kick ass IT Systems Analyst hits home with me…

So I got inspired to do this little piece, wanted to a less static/posey image than normal so I tried something out. The canvas kept getting smaller and smaller as I removed things I didn’t like, but the cropped version presented here is the good stuff.

I spent a decent amount of time on this, and I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out. You might be able to tell I was playing a lot with effects, lighting, gradients etc. in photoshop. My inks were a little messy so I was trying to get a cleaner look. Any suggestions?

Enough on this one though, I’ll go start a new piece.

One of the things I try to do is keep reading, and learning. I spend a lot of spare time browsing art from a bunch of sources. I tend to spend more time on blogs of good artists (for better or worse). Sometimes I learn just by looking at their pieces (sounds so wrong), but other times I come across a good resource which I think other people might find useful.

So here’s my first “Learning Resource” , I have a bunch of these bookmarked so I’ll post a few over the next couple of days.

He does a great job of simplifying the human form into basic shapes, it’s one thing to know the name of all the muscles and tendons and bones etc. etc., but he focuses on shapes and it looks great.

Take a look at Alan Tew’s Blog, he doesn’t do a lot of amazing finished pieces, but he has a mastery of the human form that is incredibly inspiring, it’s not just the finished look though, it’s the speed with which he does it that truly blows me away.