Kittys Drawings

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!

Hiiiiiii!!
Lightning fast posting tonight….Just a few sketches I did on the weekend from “The Figure in Motion”. Retro 70′s nudes FTW lol!!

Excuse the really dodgy heads and clumsy shading.

Should bring some colour back into this little blog huh?
ConceptArt is up to its 200th CHOW which involves a month long contest with the theme “Monarch of CHOW”. We have to a depict a king or queen of a particular music genre. TOO MUCH FREEDOM. Soooo many ideas! I should start sketching soon. Need to think about this one a lot.

You know I haven’t even done anything digital for a few weeks now? Feels strange.
Life drawing last night was fantastic too – if a little messy. Silly me to wear a white top on the day we’re meant to colour in our entire page with BLACK charcoal. Messy messy. Will attempt to somehow capture my drawings with the camera. Dreading the thought.
Okie then seeyas!!

Hi!
‘Tis about time I posted these. Friday and I’m showing you Monday’s work.
Terrible quality pics – I’m sorry I just cant get these right! I think next time I will have to go to the trouble of scanning them and stitching them together in PS.

Getting better! Things I need to work on:
* Finishing in time!!! Five minutes should be enough to get the basic form down. Work faster Esz!!
* PROPORTION. As the teach keeps telling us – take a step back and analyse!
* Detail. Knowing which bits to focus on and when.

(in chronological order from the beginning of the night to the final pose)
20mins warm up – 2mins each hands & feet

5mins poses

And these last two were 10mins a piece:

Last one is hard!!

(oh my god these photos are BAD!!! So sorry!)

The model was good – he knew what he was doing and brought along his own props like a bow which helps show muscle tone.
Drawing a man is tricky! Where there is usually curves and smooth lines on a woman it’s all boxes and no definition on a man (waist and hips argh!)

But – ze classes are seriously awesome and our teacher is great. The gallery plans to expand on things by offering intermediate lessons after this course is up, along with perspective and spacial drawing on Tuesdays. Now that’s another thing I haven’t even touched on! So depending on time and budget constraints, I wouldn’t mind doing some of Tuesday’s classes also.

Tomorrow I plan on making a start on a brochure for my parents’ winery – and doing some sketching. Melbourne has finally decided to let winter settle in and staying inside drawing is mighty appealing. That said, I may become desperate for a coffee and I have overdue library books that need returning.
Hope you all have a great weekend!!

Hiiii!
Gee haven’t I been slack? Two weeks into life drawing and I’m only posting now. And I never did find that memory card so I had to use another camera instead. This is why the photos are REALLY crappy. Seriously I’m ashamed at how bad they are. Should be taking them in daylight but it gets dark pretty early these days.
So this is gonna be a mega post with heaps of cruddy images. I’ll work on making them better for my next life drawing post.
We’ll start from the beginning and go from there. Click to make bigger – I’m trying to keep them smaller this time… Sorry I can’t be bothered formatting them so they look tidy either. Meh!




That was the first week. Notice the different techniques? We had to do some exercises like drawing without looking at the paper, drawing with our eyes shut, with our non-preferred hand and with a continuous line only. Tricky stuff! Oh and the one saying “Sorry” is when we had to rotate and finish other people’s drawings.
Onto this Monday:

Practicing negative space…

Really bad proportions….Yipes

Overall…I am loving the classes! They go for 2 hours and it’s just the right amount of time. My hands get filthy with charcoal and graphite. Awesome. And it’s all kind of freeing.
Oddly enough, out of all the people there it’s only me and my two buddies from ConceptArt that are using tone in our drawings at this stage. Which would be frustrating cos getting lines right with soft charcoal is a pain in the butt. All learning I guess. Ick these are pretty horrible drawings. It feels better to use really soft graphite over charcoal. And I need to get me some spray fixative.

Well I’m off to bed. I should be drawing more outside of life drawing. Slackie. This is invariably what happens when I pick up READING again. I have two books on the go right now so they’re taking up more of my time than they should. Naughty.

Night!

PS…and this is what happens when Puss wants in on the action….

What is it with cats and paper? She was diving under the sheets! Crazy kitty.

Hi all!
If you’ve been reading this wee blog for a while you would know I was nominated for the Lithographic Institute of Aus, Graduate of the Year award. Last night was the dinner for the announcement of the Victorian winner….sooooo…..
No use beating around the bush – I didn’t get tha big prize last night

BUT not all is lost! I got a heap of great contacts…the sales manager for Heidelberg Aus. gave me his business card so I could call him about letterpress parts. My friend’s father who owns a couple of newspapers said he has a bunch of stuff for me down in Franklin which isn’t far from Dover where my press is. He’s got a heap of type and even a man who can teach me to use the press! How convenient! So stoked. Everyone was mighty impressed that I had an interest in such an antiquated form of printing. Keeping the dream alive I hope to be!

Now I just have to get cracking and make some calls!

So who won? There were only two girls nominated out of seven and my friend (who’s father has the newspapers) won it. The same girl I mentioned in my original post about this comp who I hoped that if I didn’t get it, she would. And she did! I’m very happy that a CHICK won it, in such a male dominated industry! She is very deserving too – very accomplished and super motivated.
It was kind of obvious she would get it, being a fifth generation printing family. And little ol’ me always the underdog in a way…I wasn’t going to tell lies about what I want. I don’t want to take over the printing industry – or be some big wig going to lots of meetings. That’s not me at all.
I’d rather do my own little thing, and do it well.

And that’s that! Got home last night and today back straight into work. I got a plaque for my efforts and a cheque for $100 which is wonderful. It’ll pay for the lovely vintage dress I just bought. I should really try and get some photos of my awesome new clothes I’ve bought lately to show you all. Must hassle Jonny!

We’re really really busy at work right now. One of the women has left our end of the office to do more admin work. The other has been sick the past week so despite being two people down, no one minds because it’s been beautifully quiet!

About today’s drawing….This one is an unplanned piece. It started with me trying to draw a picture out of my LittleSnapper inspiration folder (fantastic app by the way!) which wasn’t working in the slightest. So I started again and just drew from the top of my head and this is what came out I’ve been wanting to draw a girl with her eyes shut and chin turned upward for a while and it never really worked. Think it might have been the hair issue – but that dilemma was easily resolved in this drawing. This choice just seemed logical.
This took about 1.5 hours. I made dinner in there somewhere so I’m not sure of the exact time

Until the weekend…ciao!!