Kittys Drawings

Hello All!!
This week’s work is finished and also I have my homework from the faces class. This is the profile view and Angie’s tips helped again, breaking the face down into easy proportions and points of reference.

This week we did hands – another tricky subject, one where practice counts above all! And “fashion” hands are not normal hands – noooo – they have to be stretched and thinned, stretched and thinned, until they’re pretty much alien looking. Because the longer you look at hands, the weirder they become. It’s true – its like the visual equivalent of saying a word so many times it stops sounding like a word at all.

Some practice ones to warm up – and a close up of the just the hands (super hard!).

Then a full figure…

I liked this exercise – how cool is the model’s pose? No one stands like THAT in real life!

Anyways, onto other things…
This week has been busy – I’ve not had a chance to sew since the weekend and probably won’t get a chance to again til Friday evening. I am seriously considering taking a week off work to just do HEAPS of sewing and drawing. A “working” holiday of sorts.
Till soon…

Hi Everyone!
As promised, here is some ART – omg FINALLY. Hahah ;-P

This is a design I did for a company that my partner is involved with. They are having a risk management conference quite soon and needed an eye-popping handout that would go with the visitors welcome pack given to conference attendees. The theme of the conference was psychedelic 60′s! Crazy-cool! There I was thinking that risk management was kind of dry and would need sleek and minimal design. Not so!

Thankfully, their printer specialises in packaging and boxes etc so my idea for a fold up card was feasible. I thought something 3D would stand out amongst anything else in the welcome pack and my client gave me a lot of freedom to do what I wanted. Time being a major constraint of course. I did a small mock-up which got approved and then it was time to get cracking on the illustration.

In typical Esz fashion, I bit off more than I could chew, my plans being grander than the time would allow me to complete such ideas. But in the end I think I managed pretty good. The drawing took up the bulk of the time of course. I’m pretty sure my client is happy (I hope!!) and hope to see the finished result soon. I will post that if/when I get a copy so you can see how it’s supposed to stand up.

I used Corel Painter for the illustration (the mockups were done by hand!) and Adobe Illustrator for the layout.

Next up – More sewing. I’m fairly caught up now on blog-worthy sewing projects. I made a big leap yesterday actually spent some money on some NEW fabric. It is destined to become a dress to wear to a friends wedding. Which is only three weeks away. Cue major panic. BUT – it’s a fairly simple design so I hope I can knock it out quickly. I will start on the ‘wearable muslin’ today and have a go at the proper dress next week. The fear of cutting into something that I actually paid more than $4 a piece for is kinda daunting. FYI, I bought 3m dark green taffeta, 1.5m light green taffeta with black flocked polka dots for contrast bow, and 1.5m pale green silk for the lining….total, $43 which is still kinda cheap for a formal dress isn’t it? The design will be a knee length wiggle dress so I’m hoping I was generous enough with my fabric and have plenty to cover any mistakes. And maybe enough of that dark green taffeta for another project!

That’s about all for now. I better get back to sewing!

Bya!

Hi Again

Woo some new art!
And a guy this time. Wooowee. Haha. I found the ref for this via Flickr … HERE …thought the colours were awesome and Nathan takes really cool photos. I did this one fairly quickly……maybe four hours or so? Trying to imply detail instead of spending hours on fiddly stuff. In the hope that if I do a little bit more each time, I’ll somehow end up with more polished pieces further down the track. And learn how to get the essentials down without tweaking them and possibly ruining them. Like NOSES! Oh gee – this one was hard too – why is it so hard?

Also adding texture to skin is tricky. I’m sure there’s fancy Photoshop brushes I can use, but then I don’t like working in Photoshop for the actual painting part. Maybe I’ll experiment next time.
Overall though I’m quite pleased with this. The colours turned out good – and I love the light in the photo I referenced.

I think I need to start working bigger. This is only a fraction smaller than full size and it would print out at only 7cm across.

These are the WIPs. Not much difference between the last two  – just some smoothing of skin.

I need to start finding more good inspiration for my LittleSnapper folder….I’m running low on pretty pictures to reference.

Sewing news: Yes I will get photos of the latest dress soon. I know everyone wants to see!
All my patterns that I’ve been waiting on bar one have arrived as well as some awesome purple floral fabric. So I’m all set to start some new projects. I will exercise patience and make sure I do everything neatly.

• My sewing machine runs smooth enough to control so I can’t blame it for going too fast now
• I also have some neat new scissors which will help me cut out fabric tidily and not all ragged like the dodgy ones I have been using until now.
• I have a large quantity of soft flexible film to do all my tracing.
• My buttonholer has arrived and while it was missing a part, a replacement is already on it’s way to me.
• There is some sew-in interfacing on order which I’ll need for my half finished red dress project

SO – next step…trace the blouse pattern that came with the skirt I made last and make the blouse. Then, when my buttonholer (hehe such a funny word) part has arrived I can finish the red dress. After that I can start on a full skirt dress pattern. I’ll be making it out of the stripey cotton from my Insta-stash.

Another thing that needs doing is clearing out my closet. Eep! Ever since I’ve figured out exactly how I want to dress, I’ve got a whole heap of clothes from my “pre-vintage” life that need to go. So someday I’ll have to sit down and dig it all out and determine what goes on Ebay and what goes to the Salvos. I think I need a dress form before then to display my sales on Ebay nicely. Hmm

Well – enough rambling. Sorry if it’s all MUCH too boring, it’s as much for my own clarity as for everyone else heh.

Oh and HI to all my new followers!! I’m almost at 40 now which is awesome. If I get to 50 I should do a giveaway of some sort don’t you think? What would you be most interested in? A piece of my work or more sewing related goodies? Both? Ideas please!

Okay then seeyas!

Hi All,

The last life drawing class for quite some time – busy in the coming weeks and who knows when I’ll get to go next. We were learning about light this time so some of these were drawn in the dark!

This weekend was spent cleaning in preparation for my parents coming to visit soon. I scored some free tickets to the Taste of Melbourne and we’re going to go see the European Masters exhibtion at the NGV – It’s going to be a big weekend! In the meantime, the cleanup meant we rearranged our office area. Its always good when my desk gets a tidy as I feel that much more motivated to draw stuff  We put up some art we’ve had for a while but never displayed and my bf is in the process of getting some frames for a couple of his photo prints. I think I’ll print up some of my own drawings and get those framed too – believe it or not, I only have one of my paintings on display in our home!

And now that life drawing is finished for the time being, I’ve been pushing myself to get started on the digital again. I do have something in the works which is just a practice but I’m liking it. No previews until it’s finished as I have a terrible habit of never finishing those drawings that I show previews of.

Other exciting news -  I shall be taking part in a Melbourne Spring Fashion Week event as an assistant to a well known blogger. I won’t spill the secret just yet as I haven’t even had a fitting yet (!!) so I don’t want to babble too much. All I’ll say now is that it ties in very nicely to my insatiable obsession with vintage threads….

So in the next few weeks you’ll probably get some different posts that aren’t ALL about drawing. Til then, seeya!

Hello

Down to the second last life drawing class (I think). Drapery was the subject this time and how we see the figure differently with clothes on. Drawing clothing can disguise the true form and it can be more difficult to draw ‘across the body’ like you would with a nude. Instead, you can fall into the trap of only drawing the outline which leaves things looking flat.

Warm ups….I think all the ones I scanned are about 30 seconds. Funnily enough, it feels better to use 30 seconds instead of 1 minute per pose for the warm up – gets you loosened up quicker. Our teacher likens these to stretching before going for a jog

The contour and the tone drawing. I did a blind contour this time – not looking at the page while you draw and not lifting your charcoal.

I did two drawings again for the final 20/20mins. The first one without any drapery and the second one with. Kinda stuffed up the arm on the first one….

So after tomorrow I think I have no more classes. I’ll need to get back into the self-direction. Get back into this digital stuff. I have a whole bunch of inspiration pics – and lots of ideas ready to go. Need to get off my ass and DO IT.

Bya!

Hii!

Bit late this week huh?

Not much to say about life drawing for this week – we focused on linework which I’m never that comfortable with.

Warm-ups:

Then some longer poses…

Then the final – I did 2 different ones in the 2 lots of 20mins we had this time. Only because I wasn’t too pleased with where the first one was going. Boo. And still not too sure about the last one either.

For the first time in ages, I’ve attempted to do some drawing outside of my classes. Yeh, I’m that slack. Funny thing I noticed is that I draw VERY differently when I’m muckin’ about at home. I think it’s that I don’t have as much room – drawing with my hand instead of my arm….and having a model is much different to using a photograph for reference. The photograph flattens everything and I can’t ‘feel’ the shape of the form in the same way. If only I could use a real model for reference ALL the time. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Til next week, seeeeeya!

Hiii!

More life drawing for everyone Colour this time! I had heaps of fun with this lesson and it was good to dig out the pastels – haven’t used them since my uni days! Did LOTS of drawings – the majority of them dreadful – but I have to put the really shit ones up so the half decent ones look a bit better ehehehee.

The quality of photos is absolutely terrible and I apologise in advance – I can’t nuke the levels out of them like I would with a B&W. They look a bit more vibrant in real life – winter sun and all that, crappy camera – hard to take a good pic. But enough of the EXCUSES, time for drawings

The worst first – 1 min and 2 min warm ups:

Contours – the first was meant to be 7 mins one colour and 7 mins the next but I finished early (always going too fast!) and did the next one quickly. Then 10 mins doing a drawing based on shading and using 3 colours. My third was the background colour heh.

Then the final pose – two lots of 20mins. I did the first sketch and realised it was way too big for the page so I scrapped it and started again. Really pleased with the end result – using blue really grounded the whole thing I think. Shame the pics are so craaaaaaaap argh sorry!!

Some close ups

K, that’s enough nekkid man-bum for a day Until next time!