bloowabbit: sketching

Showing posts with label sketching. Show all posts

Thursday, 11 January 2018

Picking up pigment pens...

It's been October since I last drew regularly. Bar making a little art book in Dec I haven't felt the inclination to draw. Feel I should be drawing but just didn't or couldn't. Guess that block hasn't yet gone.

Had got myself a new Passion Planner which I liked using throughout last year, for art, writing and blogging. Finally got it opened and scribbled in it. A few false starts but now seem to be planning drawing and researching. That Andrew Loomis book I got for my Nov birthday has been opened. Great book. It was first published in 1943 and many of the illustrations seem quite vintage but it breaks down each main part of the body, male and female, giving useful tips on figure drawing

The first drawing in my sketchbook was out of my head, not looking up any visual references. When I do this the features tend to be ill-placed and too large - the eyes in particular. After drawing some exercises from the Loomis book the image has improved a little.

Loomis suggests first drawing a sphere, flattening the sides and then adding lower points for the nose, mouth and chin. Drawing and re-drawing makes the method more second-nature.

The drawing I like most using his technique I drew in pencil. I become aware of the features in relation to each other and the hair 'fits' better. The drawing is unfinished but I like it how it is. This is an imaginary person drawn using the tips in the book.

I've written about other drawing aids available online, to buy and to download. I'll list the relevant blogs below.

ISBN: 9780857680983 'Figure Drawing for all it's Worth' by Andrew Loomis

June 2016 review: Art Book

July 2016 Drawing Anatomy

January 2017 YouTube vids I'm watching...

February 2017 Line of action...figure study practice tool...

All rights reserved. The artworks/illustrations or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the artist except for specific permission granted with a free downloadable.

Friday, 3 February 2017

Line of action...figure study practice tool...

In the last blogpost Line of action was mentioned by MissKerrieJ as a tool to use for figure drawing. It can be set to suit your preference, female or male figures, or both. Nude or decent. Sessions and times have also selections.

For my practice I chose female figure, decent and set it to same-length sessions. I began first with 30 second sessions to warm up and all sketches were done in my A5 sketchbook. Poses that appeared on screen were of ballerinas.

30 second poses

After seven quick sketches I moved up to 60 second sessions. At first I simply drew whichever figure came up next on screen but as I worked through the longer times I began to select poses.

60 second poses

I preferred standing figures to sitting or lying poses and flicked past ballerinas in tutus.

2 minute poses

For the 5 minute and 10 minute sessions I chose single figures.

5 minute pose

The 5 minute session took the pressure off me, I could relax. But my quality of drawing didn't increase exponentially. Instead by relaxing I didn't push myself. I used this tool to begin by warming up with the 30 second sessions and then used pencil and eraser to work on the 10 min figure.

If I were to copy what my sister, who taught me art at school, had set my class as a task I would have worked on the longest session first and ended with 30 seconds. Then by the end of the exercise I might have found I could speed-sketch much more accurately. The 2 minute poses seemed to be my optimum.

10 minute pose

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Tuesday, 31 January 2017

YouTube vids I'm watching...

It's good to surf through artists' videos on YouTube to get ideas on technique or processes. I have my favourites, listed below in an earlier blog link, but every now and then I seek out different artists.

I typed in 'sketching' on the YT search bar and picked three videos:

Quick Sketches #8 by MissKerrieJ shows the artist working in a sketchbook, her warm-up drawings on the left page lasting no more than 30secs each. On the right page she begins to draw a single figure and admits that often she doesn't know what's she's going to finish up with and this video shows her changing the figure time and time again until she's satisfied. Her 'unknown' style is something I also do unless I'm reworking an older drawing or setting out to draw fan art.

Realistic Eyes Sketch by StylEnrich shows the artist drawing an eye and using a mix of pencils, ink and gel pen. Her YT page itself is filled with craft videos and her art is a small part. If I'd seen her page first I mightn't have looked at her art videos. I followed her technique step by step, pausing the video as I went, and drew an eye. I've never liked the technique of smudging charcoal or pencil and instead prefer to shade by varying the pressure onto the paper.

Portrait Sketch by JerrysArtarama shows a lovely confident piece of work. I liked his technique of blocking in larger shaded areas first with a piece of charcoal then changing to harder charcoal pencils and erasing the initial blocking to a soft hint of itself. Using an eraser to highlight made the drawing pop. The YT video seems old-style but his drawing isn't.

When I watch and listen to a new art video I have to like the voice of the artist. And what the artist says is important - if the video is full of self-doubt or is rambling I lose interest. There's a big difference from following tips in an art book to following a person presenting their art on-screen. On YouTube knowing how to present appears to be as important as the skill you want to share.

Artists I follow on social media - blogpost July 2016

(TheMonsterPaws, Baylee Jae, Draw with Jazza, HelloAlice, markcrilley, Kattvalk, Sophira-Lou, Juicy Ink, Zyra Bañez, Bryan Collins, Sakuems, Anita Gadzinska)

MissKerrieJ

StylEnrich
JerrysArtarama

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