On a roll today with the digital drawings. No grayscale or color – just line. Pumping them out quickly.
I also opened the images with a Python script I have been working on and created some interesting changes.
Enjoy –
Tagmale
It’s been a long time since I’ve uploaded pencil drawings. Everything has been digital. During my time in Wellington I got a new clutch pencil and did a bunch of pencil drawings. I’ve photographed the works and here they are. These ar drawings from photos on Reddit Gets Drawn.
Enjoy.
RedditGetsDrawn
I got myself a new visual diary from Gordan Harris - A5 landscape style. I haven’t got a new journal since my birthday day, and I lost that during my time in Auckland.
Married couple. Classical pose. Multi figures are easier to draw than a single figure due to the ability of lining up points of interest. I like the flower in her hand. 
Viking child. Majority of these pencil works are of children. They are good subjects, and I don’t draw them enough. Slayer!
And the result. I’ve been treating my drawings similar to digital works – with building up the line first, then tone, then color. Since I have a new clutch pencil I plan on drawing more. Every night before I sleep there is no reason why I can’t get a character drawing done!
I had to draw this outfit. It’s amazing.
Sadly I haven’t got the line version of of this, which i was super happy with. But still, the tone version is alright. Nice to be able to draw the full body. I need to practice those legs/feet.
And color. I used my Derwent colored pencils that I’ve had forever. They rarely get used as I don’t like the lack of detail they give. 
These are some of my best photos of artwork I’ve done. Taking the photo in direct sunlight seems the best. I convert to black and white, and change the levels. I like how you can see the texture of the paper. I like how the girl is wearing an animal hat – similar to mine!
Another sword based reference. This time a teenager in his room weilding a sword. Full battle armor would be great – but the swords a fantastic accessory.
For the drawing I zoomed in and cut off the bottom of his legs. The drawing pad I’ve been working with is only a5 size (landscape stype) so it forces me to work smaller than usual. It’s important to work in a range of sizes – and I have been working the long landscape format for a long time so great to try something different.
Portrait in the mirror. Wedding practice time. I’m impressed by the hair style and makeup so had to draw it.
There was a request to remove the cellphone, so I did. This one is very simple, nothing happening in the background.
Another awesome hat related reference. The rain in the background also helps to make it an interesting photograph.
Problems with drawing her chest- – just couldn’t get it work. It really is a challenge without the nipple.Struggled with the arm as well — as you can see the line has been repeated several times.
I believe this person is Indian. He requested to get drawn with his son. Both look not very unhappy. Again sorry that I only have the color version of this work – I did have a line and grayscale tone version but sadly my SD card in my camera corrupted and I lost the works
I need to update this blog more often. I have many artworks to get uploaded. Maybe I need someone to write for me? If you are interested in any writing positions, please email me. I also need a theme makeover. Maybe connect the three blogs together. What other sites could I create?
Anyway, here is a painting I did before I left to Hamilton:
Another game related shot – this time Grim Fandango. I took some design liberty with this work and rearranged items – and leaving some characters out. Type is always fun to paint. Maybe I’ll
Tone. It’s interesting looking at this and comparing it to the work I just completed – my tones have really improved since I’ve done this painting marathon.
Color. I haven’t been working with color, instead focusing on graysale tones. Once I return to color I believe my tones will be stronger.
Anyway, I hope you like the painting. Till next time - 
Rock on.
Instead of drawing just a single portrait I decided to fill my page with a range of different portraits – all from RedditGetsDrawn.
I’ve been playing lots of Borderlands 2, working on a comic and arranging images within scribus.
Here’s the portrait work:
Line, red line. White background. Two of the reference images were doubles – something different. 
Grayscale and color added. I saved over the gray scale layer – normally I’m good about saving off each later. I used the palette that I created in GIMP.
I’ve photographed both of my current journals I’m working on currently. The first – a A5 shaped, rip able, thick. It’s perfect for watercolor/gouache.
Here’s two paintings I’ve done in it so far:
This started as a life drawing in Christenas class on Wednesday. I was happy with it. There was nothing that annoyed me about the image – it was a life drawing that captured most of the body, it had tone, it worked.
I brought a red watercolor and white gouache in Wellington and had several colors of gouache
On Sunday night when I arrived home from Wellington I decided to have a go – I used my large flat watercolor brush. I quickly worked over the drawing – similar to how I work with my digital paintings.
Here’s a landscape I did with the goache and red watercolor. Again, this is a very quick work with just minimal thoughts.
Maybe more of these worked in the future – I’d like to transfer some of my street drawings into watercolor. It was a suggestion from Roger Key – though he would prefer me to use oil paint (which I should really do – I’ve had oil paints sitting here for over a year not being used.
Busy week of life drawing. Last time I did it was over two months ago. Refreshing to get back into it. It will likely be sometime before I do it again. I should try to make it to Life Drawing in Palmerston North.
Here are digital works I did in Christinas class on Wednesday and Rogers Friday. Christina had very quick poses – and Roger long. I enjoyed both classes. I used pencil in my sketchbook
Works for the whole day. The poses were extremely quick so I didn’t have time to capture tone or full figures. Instead I just focused on capturing areas of the body – like I use to. There was one longer pose (top left) that I was able to add tone and color too. In Rogers I extended this idea further.
Rogers today. Geogetete was the model. She’s a fantastic model to work with – stays still and interesting curves. For all the works I went with a chalk brush. I’ve used this for my landscape works. I didn’t bother with experimenting with other brushes but rather just concentrated on capturing the lights and dark of the model.
This was a longer pose that allowed me to capture the whole model and even color it (see next piece). Areas of this still need some development – most notable the foot and calf area. The portrait could do with tonal values as well.
Color added. I started with the yellows – light and dark. Afterwards I added a red. Roger noticed the red and said it helped the work. This piece reminds me of the acrylic life painting I use to do in Dans Friday drawing class. It’s got that expressionism feel to it – mixing the tonal and line together. A range of colors helps.
I started this piece with a yellow background instead of white. This allowed me to use a light gray without having to worry about lack of contrast. I used a mid gray for the darks, and a black for the hair. The hair wasn’t working so I covered it mostly with a light gray. For the negative space I used a light blue I had used in previous works.
Color added to the figure. A red multiply brush was used first. This allowed me to preserve the under-layers. Yellow was then added as an overlay. This gave the image a very bright, and glowing look.
Ok. So I’m back in Levin after my trip down to the South Island. Now it’s time to upload all the artwork I did well away. Two sketchbooks are full of drawings. I kept to just pencil and colored pencil. It made it easy when traveling.
The class was $15 for 3 hours of life drawing. Normally they have around 8 or so people show up but numbers were low this week. Different feel to life drawing at TLC and Vincents. The model – Murry modeled in front of a fire place which was a nice touch – plus cheaper than using a oil or elecric heater.
Here’s the life drawings from the Wednesday life drawing class in Takaka:
We started with a bunch of quick 30 second poses. I focused on breaking the body into some basic shapes. I’d recently read Bridgman’s guide to drawings so I’m somewhat infuneced by his drawings. 
Getting longer. These were between 5-10 mins – several sitting and a portrait. I didn’t use my colored pencils much with this life drawing – instead just using them for the negative space. I guess this can help with capturing more details since the pencil is far more accurate than colored pencils.
Standing poses. Managed to capture the whole body on the right drawings. Proportions are out of the window – especially in those hands. Someone mentioned that even though these are off it still looks like it works. Perfect.
20 min pose. I focused mostly on the portrait - Murry put his glasses on for these last few. I’m happy with these portraits – they are clean and the line is working to my advantage.
I’ve been practicing curvy lines – making marks with a S shape. I focused for a long time on straight lines but It’s important to practice curves – because not everything is straight.
Dan had a weekend class – Figurative Expressions. He mentioned he liked it call it this rather then drawing as people are free to explore other medians – like paint and sculpture. Knowing Dan – he won’t mind if you paint during a experimental drawing.
We had two models. On the Saturday – a male, and Sunday – a female. Both Days were a success, partially the works on Saturday and final works on Sunday. Longer poses didn’t go well surprising. 
Action poses. From Saturday. I constructed the model out of shapes. I don’t like measuring these shapes, they are always estimates. I wanted to practice creating perspective around the model – this is why I used simple lines to contract an environment.
These are more developed – color! I stuck with yellow and blue for the negative space. On the Saturday the focus was on line so it was hard to capture tones – so I’ve just given it a flat color. Again – using lines in the negative space to construct an environment for the figures.
The drawing on the bottom right is working – torso, upper legs, and knees captured. I’ve been practicing the ‘S’ shape – in order to create a fluid line – I focus so much on straight lines – it’s important that I can produce other types of line.
These were some of the final drawings of the weekend – and some of my favorites. Dan was impressed by the scale change of the models/ I wanted to line up a character\.
And the final two from that sheet. As you can see I’m working landscape apposed to horizontal. It’s a habit I’ve picked up with all the brown paper drawings with life drawing. I enjoy it.
More pratice of the ‘s’ mark. I partically enjoy those legs that I colored around with blue, Forms really working. I’ll like to develop this further.
Need to create better lines.
I dared to use some promarkers. They just don’t do it for me.
This created an interesting perspective – leaning backwards while lying down. The few shapes I used created a basic idea of the shape of the model.
okk, im tired so this will do. overall a wonderful weekend life drawing. I’ve been rather useless on the computer lately – i think i need a break. but any computer work I do will be – Blender. Still more to learn. Need to render more material, expand particle systems further.
gamedev. I had a blast with Hammer tonight. It’s ok, but really what I need to do is import my blender material into Hammer. I’ve had a go with Unity3d, importing a .blend file. Though, no success it’s something I could use Youtube and find tutorials.
programming. I made a basic roguelike last week with python, I’d like to explore this further. Especially look at ideas that would allow me to create a 3d Roguelike.
Maybe writting more. That could always be helpful.
I hope you like the life drawing. More will be happening this Friday. I’m not sure who the model will be. But it will be a female! I’ll be using pencil and colored pencils again – lifting off where Sunday left me.
Friday went well. Russel was the model again. I wasn’t happy with the works I drew on Monday – just wasn’t in a good space. Friday was much better!
My surface to work on was large. I turned a fold up table on its side and used it as a backing board! I had pre-cut most of the paper so the size isn’t larger that I’m working on – though I was able to fit more figures along the page. Wish I had taken photos! I’m planning on doing it again (maybe even on Monday if there is room) so will be able to upload photos of the setup. People were impressed!
Here’s the drawings from the day. All completed with 4b pencil and colored pencils:
Gestural, warm ups. I’ve been exploring turning the figure into shapes in order to capture the complete model quickly. Enjoyable. The pencil has been nice to use – I spent so much time with colored pencil, the detail and feel of pencil is different… strange really.
This was a final pose of the day. I had asked if we could do a series of poses. Each pose was two minutes – and I’d get the model to spin around on the spot – holding the same pose. This allows me to capture the front, side and back. Russel misunderstood this and choose a new ‘action’ pose each spin. I really love this one though – maybe I’ll have to ask other models to redo this pose. Bringing a gun (toy of course) to class could work well.
The word for this pose was dance. Again – I could see this working well for a spinning pose. All it really needs is better lighting so I can capture the lights and darks quickly. Flat lighting is hard. 
With this Russel held the same pose in each turn. Can totally tell that he’s turning around. I’ll take this into Blender/3d and model it out. Wish it had color! 
Gestural works. Lots of experimenting with scale. I think I spent an hour working on the same paper so build up a large amount of figures on the same page. I’d like to work with more of those two min poses – collecting a large amount of model rotation poses. All on the same page would be impressive. 
Color. Different. Using green as a line 
Longer poses. I wasn’t happy with this pose – back poses like this always give me very little to work with. I had a go with my white charcoal – something I havn’t used since the beginning of last term
Another longer pose. I’m not sure if this is working – it seems broken and incomplete.
Another turning model pose. Again I’ll take this into Blender and model it out. I had time to capture some light in the pose but would like to have a better lighting setup so I didn’t struggle so much. 
I quite like how this came out. Exploring perspective with both feet – especially the one that’s close! Dan talked about the negative spare – mentioning how some of the lines are working and some seem off. 
This is tidyer. I like tidy. Even though my bedroom is a total mess. I like clarity in my life drawing. The left foot is working well – got positive comments from Megan and Dan about this. The middle portrait is my favorite portrait of the day. Dan mentioned – It’s very Russel. The shading technique – straight lines is new for me and I’ll explore it further. An exercise Dan got some of the class to do was straight lines. I was impressed by several works in the class. Including Megans – who was using promarkers to draw. I’ve used promarkers once for life drawing and struggled. It could be good for me to give them ago again – pencil dominates so much of my work. It was good I used oil pastel for Christenas block class at the end of
An last – the final of gestural works. These are mostly done with my right hand (I’m normally left handed). These other hand works are working better then normal. So simple but creates a effective line. Maybe I’ll work like this further. COLOR. RAWR,
It had been a week since I’d been into TLC. Today was Dans life drawing class. The model was Russel. The class wasn’t partially full, a decent amount of people but still enough room to move about without bumping shoulders.
I used colored pencil for the majority of the day, with a small amount of 4b pencil in the afternoon.
Here’s the work
These are the warmups. All are around 20 seconds. I’m rather happy with these. It wasn’t my most successful life drawing day but I feel I started well and ended on a good note.
Fifteen minutes were spent working on these quick works – so able to get plenty of figures down. And If it’s not the best pose – Don’t have to wait long till it changes!
The left side of the page. Photo was taken close up in order to get a decent view of the art. Lots of line!
Series of three poses in the morning. These were 10 mins each I believe. The right is my favorite., it’s got the most going for it. Others commented about it as well including Dan, Leah, and Rachel.
Turning the model into ‘basic’ shapes. A new way I’m looking at the model – this will make it easy to take the figure into blender.
Afternoon scribble. 4b pencil was used. Some tone used in the arm and such – line has been a focus in my work.
Here I’m looking at the same pose from multipy angles in order to try to understand the 3d form better.
I said to Dan that I’ll like to paint on Friday. I havn’t painted for a long time, I strugged drawing for 6 hours today and I’d like to relax with paint for the day on Friday.
I’ll work on different angled figure poses in the Monday class and paint on Fridays.
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