Figure Drawing for All It's Worth - Figure in Motion Sketch #1

First sketch I've done in a long while. This one's from Andrew Loomis's excellent Figure Drawing for All It's Worth. What you try to do in these sketches is capture a sense of movement, a sense of improvisation. Accuracy is not as important, but of course I got caught up in that. You still have to get the proportions correct, and while this particular sketch is a vast improvement over the ones I'd done before, I still have a ways to go in gaining facility. But I'm pleased that every day brings new progress.

Tomorrow: First figure sketch done from the imagination. I'm rather enjoying this particular sketching project. Have a couple of paintings in the works, but it's so cold outside, it's hard to photograph them. Maybe tomorrow it will warm up.

Band - Paint Journal

Another paint journal painting. I kind of like this one, given that I had no idea what the result would be when I started. I think it looks like a wild, three-man band, though the middle guy is kinda sketchy. That's all right. This is a watercolor piece initially not meant to be seen. But I liked the result enough to share.

Hopefully I'll have more stuff ready soon, for sale. 

Paint Journal 6/13/2016

Too long of a break.

This is from my paint journal--well, one of them. (I have three, so far... mostly because I forget them when I travel and have to buy a new one on the road.) It's watercolor, something fairly new for me.

Another new thing I tried was using a photo editor on my cell phone. I photograph my paintings outside--it's cheaper than doing it in a studio, since you need all kinds of equipment to get the same effect as you would just stepping onto your porch or balcony. Sunny days are fine for that, but overcast days are better.

I think it worked out fine. I don't use a lot of effects, if any, on my paintings. All I do is straighten and crop, and my cell works fairly well for both taking the photo and editing. I don't think it captures all of the nuances, but it works for paintings I feel like posting and not selling. I could probably get similar results using a camera and sending the photos to my phone to edit.

I love living in an age where all this stuff is completely portable. I don't travel a lot, but I probably will more in the future, so it's nice to have everything I need right there in my backpack. (Typically I don't bother with an easel. Most of my paintings are small enough I can complete them at a table.)

I like trying to complete a painting a day. Painting is meditative for me, and I like that I can get the same effect as simply meditating, but having completed something creative by the end of the session. I guess it makes me feel more productive, even if the results aren't spectacular. I always feel better after painting no matter how demoralized and frustrated I feel going in. For that reason alone, it's worth doing.

Kwik Stop Mart

A preliminary sketch for a graphic novel I'm working on. Well, I'm working on the script, anyway. Creating some of the art helps me formulate the story, and I'm enjoying learning how to sketch in a "comic book" style. The next challenge is drawing people in this style.

I'm beginning to see that comic book artists have taken the tradition of the masters' drawing and painting from the imagination and carried it forward. It's a lot of fun to draw something from the imagination (even if I have to use a lot of references right now.) Exciting!

Another Day, Another Crash

So I arted yesterday. This is kind of a comic book style--I'm studying vanishing points--and I sort of like the result. I tried a similar one, but in color. Wound up with a couple of hot pink buildings, so yeah... that one's not going up. I don't have proper comic drawing supplies (Blue Line illustration boards, ink, etc.) so at the moment I'm using pencil. Obviously this one has one vanishing point.

One thing I learned here is that having a T-square is not only essential for outlining, it can be used to fill in some "color" using harder-pointed pencils, such as 2H or even 4H. I've always been annoyed by those unintentional heavier shadings I get when I simply "color in" a spot. Using the T-square to draw successive vertical lines felt like a much better way to control the process, and I was happy with the result. Filling in by "lining" gives a feel of smooth granite on the buildings, I think, and you can control how heavy or light you want to shade. (This is particularly effective with softer pencils.)

I don't have a full range of pencils yet, and I'm still experimenting. This one was a lot of fun.

Post #7: Purple Heart

Now this one had me chuffed. The only paint with real liquidity I have is a small tube of purple. This texture of paint is great for blending, and it worked to great effect here. So I will have to pick up some more of this stuff. I added some black and white, as you can see, for added drama (I like drama in my paintings--but nowhere else). The result kind of reminded me of an echocardiogram. And with Veteran's Day having passed so soon, I thought the title was fitting. You'll notice the heart-shaped figure off to the side, there. 

Post #6: Untitled

No title for this one, I'm afraid. I still had some leftover ripped canvas that I used for texture. Plenty of mixing and improvising with the paints--but it's with this painting that I began to feel a sense of frustration with the limitations of thicker paint, given that it's mostly all I have. There's a point, I'm learning, where the medium mixed with the paint will only take you so far in blending it on the canvas. Sometimes you can unwittingly take off more paint that you put on--a totally counterintuitive concept, but it does happen. On the other hand, I sometimes like the effect, and I think it works in earthy paintings such as this one.