Sketch Dump- February (part deux)

 

 

 

 

So to continue on from my last post, here are more drawings of pretty ladies. I mentioned I was having trouble deciding if I wanted to stick with chalk/graphite or go with markers. I’ll probably just continue to bounce between the two.

For now, here are a few images from recent sessions.

 

I always love a challenge, and foreshortened poses are nothing but. First, there’s just getting the angle right. One wants to make the person look like they’d be normal if they suddenly stood up. Sometimes you get figures that are built like cartoons, with heads that are too big for their bodies, etc… Second, because of the first challenge you end up spending more time on your base drawing than you’d like, but you still want to finish in the 20 minutes you have during the pose. I’m not one to go back and add things after the model is done, I like to keep things as they were when I was doing them. I think it’s a better representation of what I can do in the time allotted.

I spoke about markers above, and in my previous post, but even in the marker issue there are other things to debate. The process I follow in chalk or marker is basically the same. I start with a pencil drawing, then I go over it with various gray graphites/chalks or markers, then drop in my white highlights, and lastly hit the edges or dark areas again with black marker or charcoal. Anyone familiar with Copic markers (and other brands) know that there’s not one “gray”, there are a range from light to dark and then various hues. There are cool grays, warm grays, neutral grays, and tonal grays- just in the Copic system alone. I usually bring three stages of gray, and two sets; one warm and one cool. I can’t decide which I like better, part of my brain has always preferred the nature of cool grays, Payne’s gray being my favorite color over all others. I find them comforting and gentle, but the argument can be made that warm grays feel more vibrant and alive. This first image is done in warm grays, the second in cool. It’s a hard choice for me, as the warm grays (which tend to lean toward red) blend in with the paper’s rosey/brown a bit more, but the cool grays (and their blue hue) seem to pop from the page more dramatically. If there were a theme to the image, or some sort of context, the decision would be easier. For now, it’s just a preference problem. Thoughts?

Lastly, we’ve all seen the trend of “photo bombing” on the internet, well it happens in drawing too. The last pose of the evening the other night was a reclining one, and people started whizzing about the room to find their ideal spot. I never move, this goes back to my “no bad pose” theory, and how you draw what you get. If you only draw people from the front, then when you have to draw someone from the side or back, you’re screwed. However, one girl decided to sit on the floor, to do a back drawing… right- in front- of- me. I think it’s a bad decision to crane your neck around an object to do a sketch, because your point of view alters. Basically you end up doing one, of two, things… either a bad realistic drawing (because some bits are seen from a different angle than the rest), or a half arsed cubist image (which is essentially the idea of seeing different angles of an object all in the same drawing). I chose to draw what I saw- hence the new internet trend of “drawing bombing”. Well played art student, well played.