ArtCtrl

First time doing one of Rogers life drawing this term, and as always - brilliant. His life drawing classes always goes well.

Lee was the model. She had only modeled once before (for Dan). I enjoy drawing her. We started at 9:30am with a long pose that went though to 11am. There isn’t much chances for me to have a life drawing session with these long poses so when it happens - got to make the most of it!

I spent the whole day working with oil pastel - and black and white wax crayon.

This is my warm up. It set the general flow for the day. I’m happy with the figure but extremely annoyed with the foot - the proportions are totally wack. Those toes needed to be under the height of the knee.

Main thought was layers and conveying the light though layers. This is the reason why I choose oil pastels - it’s easier and faster to layer than colored pencil. I love the subtle nature that colored pencils offer but I wanted to treat this with GRIT.

Blue was the first layer - reds - then yellows. It’s similar to my ideas that I’ve been working with in painting.

Here’s the second attempt at getting those proportions sorted. Multi studies of the same pose helped me understand it. The color palette is much more red than the first - much tighter.

I went in first with crayon to create line - giving a basic shape to the figure. This of course was straight lines - easy to measure. I feel I’m developing a real feel for measuring proportions correctly with the straight line technique.

Blue was used for the negative space - this gave a strong contrast to the yellow and red of the figure. Contrast! So important.

This pose was an hour. I’m not happy with it. Contrast with light and dark is lost within the figure - I didn’t focus enough. Could be better if we used a spotlight, using nature light gives a flat light rather than strong contrasts.

I’m still learning how to work with the oil pastels, but I wouldn’t hang this on my wall.

This was a 20 min pose. Surprising one my favorite for the day. It’s important I remember how much I can get done in a certain time frame and work to beating my time (no rushing though!).

Whats working is this colors - the balance of lights and darks. Roger mentioned that the dark in the hair helped the contrast with the skin. I choose green for the negative space over blue as I had used blue in the figure. A red could work as well.

I’m happy with this work and think it’s the strongest piece of the day. Plus it’s a standing pose!

This was a struggle. But I feel I learnt about the proprieties of oil pastel. Standing back I felt it lacked whites. Roger told me to go in with more whites then color over it. This helped but I needed more time to fix it. Whatever, it was a good resolving learning moment.

Roberts life drawing next week, and I might take a few of these works digitally.

It’s my Mums birthday today. Here’s some recent digital painting I’ve been working on. I downloaded the trial of Photoshop CS5 to give it a go… it’s nice to have a change from GIMP… I still like GIMP very much and it does have advantages over Photoshop

This started as a study from Posemanics… I studied the figure twice. First ones on the left and 2nd on the right. I feel it’s an improvement.

It then needed an environment and I was inspired by my recent oil paintings and copied them…. lots of experimenting with different brush types.

Here I’ve painted on top of a life drawing. I really want to take my life drawings further and the digital realm works well for this. Again it’s experimenting with brush types. I wanted to continue working in a opacity style.

Portrait of my mum. This photo was taken at my 21st birthday. Mums holding what she loves - wine! She dressed as superwoman for the party. I painted this for her today and emailed… she should love it!

Sargent painting. I want to take an area of this and produce a copy with digital painting. It will teach me alot… best to take an area over the whole piece, work my way out. I really want to lean how to layer works - in direct painting.

Ok, I’ve been sick recently so haven’t put time into any of my blogs. I’m felling better and starting to do more digital works (I downloaded the trial of Photoshop to give it a go - it’s been years).

Here’s some life drawings from a week ago - the final Friday of Dans. It was a most excellent session. One of the best of the term. Very happy with the results.

The model was Russel. He’s in his 50s and doesn’t look like Jesus

Gestural warmups. I’m never really happy with these but use them to get into the flow of the day. I guess they are helpful. 8b graphite stick was used.

Stretch! This figure is totally elongated, but I love the effect. Pushing those limbs to the limit. I didn’t mean to push it this far, but the effect works. Color! I have a bunch of watercolor pencils from 2010 that I have barely used - may as well put them to use. I love blue, especially that top one. The flesh tone is working well for the figure. I’ll explore these colors further.

Extreme foreshortening  Not a lot of information was present but I managed to capture the figure. I’m especially happy with the stomach area - certainly my strong point in drawing figure. I need to practice limbs further.

This was a fav amongst other students. Gestural works - but focused on a small portrait to develop it further.

The hand in the top right was a beauty and got positive comments from my tutor - Dan. I really love these colors - The blue and flesh tone contrast beautifully.

Gestural. Exploring arms. It’s a bit rubbish, needs more time. Biggest problem with the gestural works - wanting to take them further but not having the time.

Working with wide screen paper - I’ve done this all term and the format has worked well for me. Here I’ve tried to emulate the

This was my favorite for the day. The line is beautiful with the tone. Especially the upper leg. The hand has problems with anatomy. It’s a shame I didn’t finish the whole figure.

First update since the blog has been part restored. It’s mostly life drawing posts that have been re added. I will go though my artwork and create new posts for the missing work (especially traditional painting). The digital doesn’t worry me so much.

Here’s some recent life drawings of Georgette and Lee. The final Monday of the term involves double models (though we only had a 2nd model from lunch). I wasn’t happy with the work in the morning but once afternoon hit it improved. Georgette just wasn’t working for me. Strange really, in the past when I’ve drawn her it’s gone well.

It was nice to draw Lee, shes a TLC student but had mostly focused on Jeweler - she’s doing more life drawing nowdays.. Quite a regular at Vincents.

This is my favourite of the day. I’d like to take this style further. It’s working well. I’ve been timing myself in how much I can capture (not rushing). I should be able to capture the full model in 5 mins, no problem.

I used yellow to show the light and blue for dark/line. What do you think of this drawing?  Graphite pencil. Messy, I prefer a cleaner look in my life drawings currently. This is the style I did 2 years ago. 

This wasn’t working. I have nothing more to say.

This is working. Same color scheme as the first. The top drawing - not so much. But the bottom is there. What more could I add to it? Maybe a green layer? The scale of these are small compared to what I’m use to working with.

Todays theme for Reddit SketchDaily is: A study in Grays. Interesting theme! Gray!

I used Flickr for reference images. Normally I use Deviantart for stock images but DA stock artists often get cranky at using their photos on websites that isn’t DA. I hate DeviantArt with a passion. I started going back on there again but realised again quickly just how shit it is. Conceptart.org is better.

The reference I found on flickr:

My sister has a gray cat. She’s a sweetheart and never would hiss, delicate. Find it on Flickr here.

Ok, now a painting. I started with a quick line sketch. I’ve enjoyed using these lines recently. A small change.

For my Facebook friends this year I am creating digital birthday cards. I am sick of seeing crappy updates on Facebook of posts that just say: Happy Birthday, have a great day. The majority of content I am sent from friends and such is reposted from other sources. I guess that’s a motivation behind this blog – to create original content. Today my friend Joshua has a birthday. I met Josh during my visits with Occupy Wellington. During this time I drew portraits. Josh always wanted a portrait but I never got around it. For his birthday I completed a digital portrait for him.

The reference photo I used:

Another video from my digital work. This time I added a commentary to it. The sound isn’t the best, and I’m nervous/tired. In future I’ll work on a script/prompts before hand. I need a new mic if anyone would like to donate! Button on the right —–>

No the reference photos and JPGfor this- I was working straight from Chrome and reset my computer earlier, losing the works. Oh well.

Here’s the video:

The theme today on Reddit Sketch Daily is Inappropriate School Mascots. My first thought – Courage Wolf.

My friend Luca was the one to introduce me to Courage Wolf – though the app on Facebook. Many good generations!

Here’s a The Lion King and The Dark Knight Rises mash up. I saw this on Mashable and love it.

The Lion King was the first film I saw at the Cinema Beethoven was spose to be the first but I saw the poster for Alien 3 and refused to enter – Mum had to return the tickets and we went to the video store where I hired out movies I had seen many times before. Mum was disappointed.

Skipping a few years, my  sister Holley would watch The Lion King multi times a day on VHS. She loved it. It drove me insane. To this day I haven’t re-watched it since Holleys bursts. I have it on my laptop so may have to harden up and watch it. Excellent film.