Sketches

A series of composition sketches from pictures from 2014.02-24

Five Minute Sketches

Take the approach to the one minute sketches and don't alter it except when the minute is up continue for the remaining five minutes. Try all the while to continue to focus on the big shapes and work your way down to the details as 5 minutes will allow.

Five Minute Sketches

Five Minute Sketches

Do not be discouraged at first if this seems difficult or you are not achieving satisfactory results. Just continue and keep in mind the looser you hold on the pen and let it move freely in your hand while imagining that your hand is tracing the forms as it moves, the better you will train your hand and eye to work together. Time spent paying attention to this and practicing will pay off.

15 Minute Sketch - Pilot Razor Point Pen

10 Minute drawing with Pencil Under-Drawing(erased)

One Minute Gesture Sketching

When sketching on the spot with people all around and moving from one pose to another, nothing can be counted on to stay in one place for very long. For this reason, it is good to be in practice at capturing the essentials very rapidly so that if fortune allows us to work longer, we at least have a good foundation to sketch upon.

One minute sketches

Sometimes when sketching  people or animals, it is not the details that we are after but a quick sense of the changing motions that people make. Have you ever noticed that some of the most interesting poses that people take are not the ones that they set themselves into as models, but the in-between gestures that they take while doing very natural things. All these moments can be studied with quick skills at gesture drawing.

One minute sketches

If it can be remembered from the very start of a session of such drawing: we must not try to stay in one place too long with the drawing instrument, but instead to get very rapidly a sense of the placement of the whole figure in space. Probably in the first 10 seconds there should be a few strokes that lay out the basics and constrain the form in all its extremities.

The figure has five major limbs like a star. Think how long it takes to draw a star. Can you begin to draw the figure with such rapid and confident action?

Note on Materials: I chose this time to draw with a Staedler Lumocolor F pen because it flows rapidly and is relatively blunt with regard to conveying detail. It would be futile to try to capture any serious detail with it, so I am forced by the choice to instead focus on the gesture as I should do in one minute sketches

Dinner at Steak n' Shake

Eating at Steak n' Shake

Soulard Musican

Soulard Musician

Thumbnail Sketches

started with pen

colored and annotated digitally

Digital Courbet Copy - Part II

Straightening tings out.

Noting spatial relationships.

Placing the eyes.

Refining and working the 5 values.

Tuning the likeness

I am starting to move towards the major details (not minor). I had best take a break and make absolutely certain before going forward that something is not off. More on that in the next post.

Old Master Challenge

I am interested as a challenge to see how different artists might approach the task of reproducing well an old master portrait. In this case I would do it digitally. If we took as an example this portrait by Gustave Courbet, how might you do it? I will take it up as I would any other portrait drawing commission. It is a good image full of lots of drama. I will post my first stage block-in or rough-draft tomorrow.

These points from a well known philosopher may apply well to deconstructing a portrait as well.

• Divide every question into manageable parts.
• Begin with the simplest issues and ascend to the more complex.
• Review frequently enough (step back) to retain the whole argument (impression) at once.

Gustave Courbet

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Step 1 - Block in the biggest shapes.

Five values

Set five values and work with them until you can go no further without adding another color. Don't add more colors too soon. You would be surprised how well you can define an image before requiring more than five basic values.

Roughly but accurately suggest placement of major geometry.

Break it down.

d Begin to use all 5 values and break it down into the major shapes like stained glass fragments.

Step back and assess, then refine. Is everything locking into place like it should?

Take a break and look at it.

Now I get to take a break and look to see that the head is tilted a bit too far to the right. The bridge of the nose should be straight up and down. This is the time to correct that, and not later. Don't wait until the point at which you are laying down detail to find out something has the wrong attitude or emotion. Right now, we are looking at it like we are across the room at an opera. We can't see the details. We only see the big emotions and layout of the action.

Note: My aspect ratio on my drawing is a bit shorter up and down. I can just get a little bit less of the collar in this study. Also, I drew the value scale on another layer to keep it separated.

Block-in of Lisa

Lisa - Block In

Sketching in the Laundromat

I took a quick moment to sketch while my girlfriend and I were down at the laundromat. This was done in 15 - 20 minutes. It is hasty, but maybe still you can see the idea.

When the dark sketch lines are removed from the drawing, it leaves a bit different feeling which I think I like.