For our life drawing classes, we’ve been given a term-long project – reproduce a Lucian Freud work. The image that I am aiming to replicate is below:

The aim of this exercise is to learn about using line direction like contours – finding the planes of the face and so forth.

My progress as of yesterday is below. Curiously the image I was given to replicate is a flipped version of the image that I seem to be able to find online. It’s possible that one is of the original etching and the other is from images taken off that etching? Who knows?

Some pages from my sketchbook, spanning just over a week of stuff. Some rough ideas for an arcade stick design (nothing usable…) some meandering thoughts and some Zodiac related scribbles.

Alright, so time for an explanation.

In late July I was challenged to a blog-war. Blog-off. Blogfest. Blagofest even. The challenge was for each blogger to set a posting rate for themselves and to commit to it for the month of Blaugust. Uh, August.

Most of you probably know this already because you likely follow my comrades and rivals. You can find these fiends at the following places:

Leaflocker, home of the curious Thom, instigator of this blog challenge. Head here for all your miscellanea needs.
Telling Stories, John’s writing blog.
Jp’s Lab, James P’s blog that we’re all surprised is updating at all, considering he was somewhat reluctantly roped into the challenge. Primarily a coding hub.
M Dev Blog, The volatile blog of James F. We all wait with baited breath to see if this fascinating swirl of words and ideas will remain standing until the end of the month.

My commitment is to provide three posts per week of hopefully art things. Readers may even be graced with bonus updates from a guest poster. ie, someone that I couldn’t convince to start a blog, but did feel that a once-weekly commitment to do stuff sounded like a good challenge. While we’re on the topic, if you’d like to start a blog or website and lack hosting space, a) that’s a pretty lame excuse and b) I’d be happy to take on more people under the ‘chenonetta’ umbrella, provided you don’t find the domain name too silly. Let me know and we’ll discuss your needs.

Right, “Where’s the art,” you say? Here it is!

Homework for my life drawing class. We were to take a piece of cloth, like a dishcloth or something and twist it up. The aim is to portray the surfaces of the object using contour lines. Think of topographical lines or a wire frame model. I found it helpful to imagine a grid design printed on the dishcloth that I had to draw.

My first attempts are hurried and shaky. I can kinda follow the idea in the trailing ends of the cloth but lose the rhythm along the twists of cloth where I’m unsure about whether to be following the folds and curls or to try to simplify the mass into a simple sausage shape.

My last few are a bit better, probably also because I slowed down and thought about the problem a bit more. I’m quite pleased with the progress shown between the first attempts and the last ones.

Until I blog again,
Ale

Oh, and while I’m updating, here are some more bits and bobs of various old art:

And lastly, you may have seen my Ducky Love design, but what about pink ducks?

Oops, been a bit quiet again. Here’s a quick-sketch I lined up a while ago to appear here…

Reference from a fashion magazine, I think.

I think I was lazy with the shape of the face and traced the outlines so that I could move onto practising the shading. I wanted to spend some more time on rendering noses and lips – and it shows, because other areas feel a bit flat. But as a quick drawing exercise I think this turned out okay.

One from a series of images.

This morning I was hurrying to my bus stop via a narrow alley when I was quite shocked to realise there was something very big and very black sitting on the fence next to me. A huge, fluffed up crow.

But maybe it wasn’t that huge, maybe it just seemed that way because it was above me, or because it was all fluffed up. At work today I drafted the below two pictures, playing with two different view points.

Gah!

"Oh, hi"

I didn’t have time to finish the second one before my lunch break ended, but I also thought I could handle a lower view better. So I redid it when I finished work.

Revised and inked.

I think I like the expression in the first one a bit better. I also lost the shape of the bird when I inked it (It was a bit sleeker and I kinda wanted it to hint at the silhouette of a falcon because at one point when I looked at the crow I thought it was a member of the falco family!)

The damn bird was at my bus stop again when I got home this evening. It flew around lazily, taunting me as I scurried to my car…

Some things I’ve learned about depicting objects using tone:

• Work from light to dark, covering the whole image with each layer of tone.
• Use circular movements to apply pencil strokes, so that the direction of the strokes don’t interfere with the shading.
• The human brain is capable of filling in lots of information. There’s no need to use a line to define an edge when the viewer can imagine it.
• Squint! Let the shapes blur into each other and then work out what the main tones throughout the piece are.

Here are my last three homework pieces, all focused on practising the correct application of tone:

A polystyrene ball and toilet paper roll. Glamorous stuff.

Quite a light application overall, but the shapes are still readable (though my camera might try to convince you otherwise). It was a bit light in the room when I did this one, but it might have been that I was using an HB pencil that resulted in the lightness.

Katamari, soap and mini-dish

Well, my prototype Katamari was an excellent matte white object to draw. Part of me wishes that I composed this differently, with all the objects stuck to the Katamari, but I think this turned out really well. The Katamari was described as a “mutant tennis ball” during last week’s homework review, and other than the soap appearing to tilt upwards a bit (I wasn’t able to erase the pesky lines in the back corner), I got a good response for this one.

Powerboards in charcoal

I like the composition in this one. It has a little more narrative than random objects put together. The plug caused me lots of troubles and the sockets were no walk in the park either! After taking this photo I tweaked the far left shadow and the shape of the top power block. Taking a step back from things really helps to point out errors and inconsistencies. I’m eagerly waiting to hear my art teacher’s critique tonight!