Kittys Drawings

Hi All

Slackie blogger is back. Been a bit of a hectic week here at home and also we’ve been SHAPED. How can that be when we’ve got a 70/70GB download limit??? Well I’m sure downloading 50 or so gigs of files won’t help *ahem*…so I’m posting in those rare few hours of awake-ness before 12pm on a weekend ehehe.

This week’s life drawing we were focusing on the head and how we shouldn’t treat it any differently to how we draw the rest of the body. It can be hard trying to draw a face quickly while disassociating yourself from the fact it’s a face and trying to get all the features accurate. We were told not to aim for a likeness, just DRAW.
And draw I did

So here’s the results…A bit blah but I like the last one. Usual mix of quick warm ups, contours and then the longer poses at the end.

And this time Boof wanted to check out what was going on. This photo is better of the drawing too – less blurry! I SUCK at photography ehehe.

Hi All!

Another week and another life drawing class. And still with the black and white.

Just LOVING the charcoal right now, particularly the pressed stuff – it gives such a velvety rich black. Usually I start with the regular willow charcoal to get the basics down as it’s more workable – much softer and easy to rub out if you make a mistake. Then when it’s time to pay attention to the bits I want to highlight, I use the compressed charcoal. So much awesomeness.

Attempting to format my pictures a bit better too as I’ve been very slack on that front ( ). I also found a Flickr widget that makes importing my pics onto the blog a bazillion times easier. No annoying copy and paste yay!

This weeks class was excellent as ever – I like the last piece the best as usual but not sure if it’s my favourite of all….was a tricky pose from where I was standing but it came out okay. The teacher does give me an awfully big head too so I usually leave class feeling rather good about myself….though often with that little voice in the back of my head squeaking, “Oooh but you can do BETTER Esz – you can do MORE. Tsk tsk never enough never enough”.

A couple of the 1 minute warm-ups – most of these were shocking so you only get to see these two:

A go at trying to show weight and volume with line only and the next one ‘sculpting’ with charcoal. This is done by first laying out the basic shape of the figure in a mid-grey and then ‘pushing’ the parts receding from you in a darker tone, and ‘pulling’ out the opposite by removing the charcoal from the paper. Hard to explain. I’m a bit meh about it.

Then, the last piece which is all YAY Hehee. Looks more like a landscape doesn’t it?

Oooh and of course, Puss wants a look-see

Hope everyone’s week has been treating them alright so far Til next time!

Hi Everyone!
Another session of life drawing all done and dusted for the week – and yes I’m only getting this to you on a Thursday! Busy busy week! Work is insanely mad at the moment – the pile of jobs just doesn’t seem to get any smaller even though I’m there from 7am to 5pm every day.

Onto the drawing then….LOTS more progress this week – can’t believe how much I’m loving the class right now. I churned out a heap (this is only a few) and even managed to knock out some decent contour drawings.

We’ll start from the beginning – a whole bunch of 2 minute and then 1 minute poses to loosen up:

Then onto the contours….They look way different and while line is fun, I think I prefer shading…

^^^^^^
I’m quite proud of the one on the right

And then the last two poses went for 15mins and then 20mins (or something like that, the last one was long)….Plenty of time to really work on light and shade. Love drawing like this the most as its all tone and I dont have to worry about a perfect line, instead I just kind of pick out the form from the paper. Hard to explain, but thats what it feels like – more like sculpting I guess?

And this one – worked on that knee for quite a while

Until next time then peeps
Bye!

Omg drawings!!!
FINALLY.

So….I made the effort to take pictures of these cos we have a new life drawing teacher. I finished the first term and after a bit of drama with the previous teacher, one of the models and the gallery owner, they hired someone new for the next term.

Now there was no problem with our previous teacher but Monday’s session was particularly awesome. It felt a bit more “free” in that we didn’t have to be anatomically correct with our drawings and we didn’t have to finish the initial 3 minute poses.  I guess you could argue for and against both styles of teaching but I definitely felt I got further just in those two hours.

Here’s some of the first few 3 minute poses. It was all about the gesture and trying to get the feeling of the pose out as quick as possible.

In the middle of the session we did some contour drawing, where the aim is to not lift your pencil/charcoal off the page for the entire 10 minutes. Most of us FAILED the first time including me. I thought eh, one line I can do one line – but attempted to add tone with scribbles and it just wasn’t how you were supposed to do it. Doh!
Since I used graphite, the drawings are too shiny to take pics of properly and they’re kind of crap so you won’t be seeing those! Nyer! ;-P

Finally we did the last pose which was a really long one. Two sittings of 20 minutes. Plenty of time to refine your drawing or start afresh. I chose to refine – maybe a little too much as it takes out some of the energy of the pose but eh – I’m kinda proud of this one.
Hard to take a pic of this one without some crazy warping.

A better angle – Don’t mind Puss getting in on the action again!

Sooo – hopefully getting my drawing mojo back slowly….Seeya’s round!

Still struggling with this blog thing…..Got a huge backlog of life drawing to photograph…and really need to get back to that digital.

Where has my drawing mojo gone?

Quick sketch so you have something to look at….and I’m trying to pop my head in here at least once a week.

Get it together Esz

Hi!!
Still struggling…..well….Not drawing very often. And sticking to these figure studies. Life drawing is awesome – Still haven’t got round to trying to photograph the last few weeks worth in daylight though.
Yes I suck.
Poor neglected bloggy…
Sorry for the lack of interesting content. Thanks for sticking around if you’re still reading!

Further attempts at shading. Getting there. The classes are helping me see tone better. And structure – all those underlying bones and how things connect, like in the knees and wrists. Ankles are hard though! Goddamn FEET.
Till next time….

Howdy!
More quick figures from The Figure in Motion….
Need to somehow get myself back into the digital colour don’t I? Not sure what is going on there….in a bit of a funk lately. I guess it’s okay to just focus on the figure and anatomy for a while…..

Anyway, I kind of like these…quite loose and quick and they don’t look hideous.

My brother and his girlfriend are visiting from Tassie this weekend. We’ve done quite a bit of shopping and checked out the Eureka Skydeck and “Edge Experience” – where they stick you in a glass box attached to the building and proceed to hang you out over 280m of nothing with only 4cm of glass below your feet. Sound scary??? Well it was cool, not so scary…..But worth doing.
Hmm that is all the news I have for you right now….Still haven’t got round to taking pics of my latest life drawing class. Until then….bye!