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!

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!

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!

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!

Not too much to say today. Been busy this week so not much time to draw. Spending too much time reading. Reading my crazy geeky physics book titled The Fabric of the Cosmos by physicist Brian Greene. Yep, I’m that geeky. Well, not geeky enough to know all the equations, but I like reading about quantum uncertainty and superstrings (though I’m not up to that part yet). Hehehehe

Onto the drawings…Just some more fashion-y things. Nothing spectacular.

Not sure I’m making a lot of progress but I’ll keep at it huh. Life drawing starts again Monday so I’m looking forward to that. Apparently we get a male model this time. Teehee.
Bya!