February 25, 2009

A few Life drawings

20 min pose - red pencil
I treat each pose differently, as do most other artists, I'm sure. I tend to prefer rougher, not fully finished artwork more than totally polished stuff that is "perfect" from corner to corner, where every inch of the thing is just as finished and important as every other inch. As the person creating the thing, you can decide what to highlight in the piece. Which part is the focal point? Which elements are not the main and featured elements, but are there to frame, support and direct the viewer's eye to those parts which truly are important as deemed so by the artist? An example might be a guy standing, looking straight ahead with a crowd of people behind him. Clearly, the background people, the crowd can be less important, they are there to support the featured guy. If you can count every single tooth in every person in that crowd, you've stolen attention from the main element. Especially when time is more limited, the figure should be treated the same way. 

I tend to try to get the gist or gesture of the given pose down, the essence, but focus my time on the most interesting area or part of the figure provided by the pose. Sometimes the model will take to pose which is worth nothing- like being handed a heavy diaper. This is where you draw some of the other artists in the room with you who have better angles, go for a smoke, or sketch from your mind. In the above sketch, all I really cared about was the belly area, the mid section. Not much was going on with the face or anything else, just wanted to indicate it. 

20 min pose - red pencil
This one was quite the opposite. For me the focus was all on the face and head followed by the hand- the rest being just indicated enough to not have things floating on the page. 

20 min pose - brown pencil
In this one I wanted to try to describe the twist in the mid section and at least indicate the areas of stress and where weight was resting. Clearly I did get tempted into messing around with the face too much which is something I try to keep myself from doing in figure drawing as much as possible. 

20 min pose - brown pencil
I guess this one is a bit more finished than the ones above. Again, falling to facial temptation, not exactly sure why... maybe the desire to improve things. What I really wanted to do was capture and describe the contrasting sections- the strong bent back in the neck caused by the head tiled up versus the mid section scrunching up due to the hunching forward in the back. 
1 min pose - black pencil
This one was probably done in about 2000 or so. I called it "mmm gum" becuase it looks like a crazy homeless person who found some yummy chewing gum that someone "lost".

A few Sketchbook Drawings

Some fat kid somewhere, don't remember
where I was. Ballpoint pen.

A girl at a Starbucks in Florida. Brush/pen
and ink.

I drew this guy at a local coffee shop one night
a couple of years ago. Just thought he had a great
face and a cool beard.

Reddish pencil on tracing paper.

This is a sketch of my uncle sleeping on a couch. I did this
one about five years ago. Pen and ink. This was a follow up
to the sketch below...

This is the same uncle, same room, same couch but at
least three years earlier.