Here are some 2-10 minute drawings made during performances at Womad. It’s always frustrating to eye a potential model for a few minutes, then have them move as soon as you start drawing them! A couple of these were finished after the person walked off. A performance ended just as I started another, so I quickly drew him before he packed up to leave.
Saturday is concepts/walkthroughs day!
Here are the sketches and scribbles that went on to become the painting I posted on Wednesday.
The original concept was all about the raaaage in the foreground character and didn’t focus so much on the background pair.
A first play with the ink.
Building on the composition and the characters.
Final thumbnail.
Some different style experiments.
Blaugust is back, which means more blogging! I’m hoping to be able to provide lots of content this time, with the crutch of “old art” to help me fulfill that goal.
Click for larger view!
This piece is from my life drawing classes last year. The assignment involved drawing a self-portrait involving three figures composed in some kind of narrative. We were also supposed to take stylistic lead from another artist.
I chose to emulate Marlene Dumas’ ink drawings as I was at the time experimenting quite heavily with watercolours and inks. I combined her use of unpredictable washes with the sharply defined edges that can be attained by using masking fluid.
I got quite wrapped up in the narrative and the symbolism. I think our lecturer was specifically addressing me when she cautioned us against turning the assignment into an illustrative work. And although the assortment of (mostly) round shapes in the background on the right seem quite arbitrarily chosen, there is a meaning attached to each.
A project for life drawing this term was to use collage techniques to create an image. The term’s work has consisted of less representational drawing work and more exploration into extrapolation of form and figure as well as different materials and techniques.
Here’s the reference ‘sketch’ I made:
And here’s the completed collage:
One of the things that struck me about the source image was the striking light and the contrast between highlights and shadows. When choosing materials for my collage I chose to go with bright colours, reflective surfaces and contrasted them against a black background. The hi-vis material was pretty fun to work with.
This year I’ve been taking life drawing classes. Unlike still life setups from my general drawing class last year, life models aren’t able to hold the exact same pose for the entire time they’re needed as reference. Sometimes, they “sag into the pose”, and sometimes we come back from a break and they aren’t able to quite return to the same pose as prior.
So what do you do when a model hasn’t returned to the same pose? Well, the easiest thing to do is to direct them back into the right one. If the pose is only slightly off, then sometimes the differences can be ignored – especially if the drawing itself is complete and the artist is on to the next stage, like toning or colouring. This time, we didn’t catch the differences, and my nearly-complete sketch was quite off. With nine minutes left for the pose my art teacher advised me to redraw the areas that were off – mostly the arms and curve of her back.
Image previews tiny so you can decide whether they’re safe for work or not. There’s very little detail but it’s still a nude. In an artistic context! An artistic nude, if you will.
