Life Drawing Watercolors and Stuff

Can a pose be any more boring? Geh..I have no patience for hour long poses.

So...one month of not going to life drawing consistently (or at all) and you're right back at ground 0, dammit. I have recently made the analogy that life drawing and drawing in general is just like working out (two things I love): you stop for too long and all your nice tone and muscle goes away and you get stiff and weak. Same applies to drawing. But life drawing is more like deciding to skip exercising one part of your body for a while, so everything goes out of balance as a result. Geh..I can only imagine the downhill my life drawing will take starting in April. Anyhow...enough complaining. Lots of work to do!

Also, every person needs to watch this film: L'Illusioniste (that's the trailer and you can easily find the movie online) The neat thing is, there is no dialogue in the whole movie, and the whole story is told through action and expression. I haven't seen human emotion animated this well, so even if you're not too hot on the story, do yourself a favor and watch a few clips and just learn from them. This is precisely why I want to work in the European animation industry. Oldschool 2d still lives!

Have a good weekend everyone!

50th Post!

One of my favourite models in terms of body shape and attitude. Haven't drawn her in ages.

One of the older models who is super good at modeling but I happen to suck at drawing her most of the time.

Probably 2 minute poses...maybe 3?

1-2 minutes. All about the flow here.

The missing hand bugs me too I know.

5s and a 10 in the middle I think.

 

Some sexy bodies as promised! : )

The ones I really liked went to portfolio and I was a bit lazy to go

look for them again to repost here..you'll have to wait. But a few of

these will probably make it there. Like the ones below. : )

Stuff!

 And not all of it life drawings! But mostly life as usual...Layout is meant to be a pretty heavy part of my portfolio and I do enjoy it (even if it takes like 8 hours to do the piece above...) I was reading an amazing book called The Art of Layout and Storyboarding by Mark T. Byrne, specifically focusing on the amazing section dedicated to forced perspective, which is frequently used in pans and whatnot. I had my first go at it back in March and it proved to be mind warping. This time around I made my own rough grid though and I think it actually came out exactly as I wanted to. This piece is made for a panel of a little project I'm working on and its a transition from day to night of the same street. Rendering was super fun, especially the nighttime side since I don't usually do any pieces set at night (hm...) Below is the underdrawing I did. I also made a thousand thumbnails to get the perspective I wanted on it, plus research on little houses and whatnot. Ironically I combined french market streets with hints of chinese housing...haha.

The models have been doing longer poses most of the time by the time I get my butt over to extra life, so most of these poses are in the 10 minute range...some maybe even 20. I really need to note these things. I had the same model all week ironically...and the look she gave me on the last day was just murderous. I swear she thinks I'm stalking her....

I wasn't getting the pose right so I just decided to focus on the midsection for a few minutes and was pretty happy with what happened here. No, she did not have such nice curves though...

Finally done working on torso anatomy and am moving on to the arms! One of these days I'll do my giant anatomy study dump...make this blog look like a medical study. 

Initially when she did this pose, I was going to move since head on poses usually come out badly and are not that interesting to draw. But there were no seats anyway, so I decided to stick it out. Her right forearm really um...splayed out on her knee so it looks almost out of whack when drawn, but overall I like how nonchalant it turned out.

My friend noted how my stuff has been getting too stylized. This one is for him. You know who you are. ; )

Why do we ladies, regardless of our weight, have such huge buttocks when we sit down?? Wish I finished that right hand..

And a long one to finish things off. 

Some more fun stuff coming your way on Sunday!

Marker Madness

portfolio piece perhaps? we'll see...

I decided to loosen up on the rigid anatomy for a while and instead of imposing the bones, ridges and curves of the body just to observe them, exaggerate and I guess enjoy (?) them. The marker was great fun cause there was no "pressing lightly", you just kind of had to put the right body parts in the right proportion off the bat. It wasn't easy but I like where this style is going for me! Mostly 10-15 minute poses, mostly in marker. Enjoy!

Gettin' Kinky with Conté

Ever wonder what my life drawings look like when I spend 20 minutes on them? I did too. Now I know. This was about a 25 minute pose.

Hello again! Update in the middle of the week? Mhmm, I like to keep you on your toes. Also I just decided to eat at midnight and can no longer sleep so what better things to do than photograph your most recent batch of life drawings?

I've been having a bit of trouble getting into the fundies rooms lately so as a result I've moved into the illustration department (dun dun dun...) where people shade and draw really well and the poses usually START at 5 minutes. It's different pace altogether but it really let me try out some different things I've been itching to try. The lighting is sweet and being in a room with that much talent really pushes you to try harder. I think I found my new room. (And why is there a general trend of illustration students looking like supermodels while the animation students look like bums?? I feel even more hobo-esque nowadays) Anyways, let's get on with it!

One of my fave pieces so far I think. Totally exaggerated her boniness just for the hell of it but really got into the pose. Portfolio worthy perhaps?? Copic marker. 10 minutes.

These two were also a ton of fun to do. Once you kind of drop the whole "has to be perfectly proportionate" bit and really just focus on the flow of the body, it still seems to come out proportionate even with the exaggeration and simplification of things...

15 minutes, nothing special, but at least it's finished?

I wish I fit her foot on the damn page! Was so happy with how this one came out until I hit that point..

More marker fun!

Cuz backs are the sexiest thing to draw. And super difficult to get them just right!

Hope you enjoyed these and feel free to tear down my ego at any point! : D

Nice bum, where you from?

3 minute muscle form study

So when I mentioned this post would be up Tuesday I forgot to mention "Juli Tuesday" which can mean....who knows when. Mostly I was so disappointed with most of this work I was hoping to cram in a session or two of decent life drawings before posting my work from last month. SO these are basically the only things which I was okay with, but my pile of life drawing garbage is currently clogging up our whole recycling cupboard (does that shtuff even get recycled I wonder..?) I'll rant in my next post so basically sit back and enjoy!

1 minute gestures (no clue how I managed to get so much detail in these, good day I guess)

1-2 minute gestures (kind of loving the headless torsoless one and the lady bending over)

3 minute poses, worked with some exaggeration. Quite happy with the boobies in these, usually my drawings make

them look unnatural...

5 minute ones, model wasn't too exciting..

used a marker for this to prevent myself from getting "sketchy" since you can't really press lightly

with a marker. I kinda stopped at maybe 7 minutes into this pose though..

Some 2 minute gestures, think I like these the best, I really worked with the curves of the model. Also happy with

the boobs in these. Good month for that I guess..

And Ron! Who is the most awesome model ever! And also

most difficult to draw since he loves to do crazy unnatural

poses. I came in late into this session and he was only doing 10 minute poses so

they were a bit more relaxed. But I'm kinda pleased with how these came out, though I seem

to stop at 5 minutes. Need to figure out where to add detail after this stage...

Here I only wanted to show the main one of the back, and the pensive fingers crossed

piece. 10 minute pen sketches. Nice bum huh?

First World Problems

Yesterday was a day filled with first world problems, beginning with my morning coffee having...egad: MILK instead of cream. My morning routine which kind of both confirms my existence and wakes me up was disrupted by a snotty nosed teenager with his whiney voice. I'm not in China anymore dammit, let me enjoy the saturated fatty things in life already!

Also as I was biking home (for like an hour) another snot nosed justin beiber girl thing timed a red light for me right before a huge hill and did this cocky snot nosed smirk as she slowly crossed the road listening to her boy bands. I swear I ripped muscles trying to bike that hill in third gear....and Yes I'm going draw her and she ain't gonna be pretty. Anywho, I could dig my own grave here with endless rants of immature problems, but this is an art blog, so shall we?

Isn't it ironic how you put in like 9 or 10 hours of life drawing a week and all you keep are maybe 20 drawings? Progress is such a slow thing...anyhow, here is week 2 and I'm back to using newsprint and CONTE! Damn I missed conte. Am I buying it like a good art student? Nope. Not gonna spend 2 bucks on compressed carbon. Still being a bum and picking up leftover scraps after life drawing. My goal is to not buy a single piece this year...ta da?

So let's begin with my 30sec-1minute gestures. Nothing special but I'm happy with the exaggeration of the poses.

I'm pretty happy with my 2 minute ones lately, and most of the models did those poses

for ages so I got a few I liked. I feel like I'm starting to get more detail down in 2 minutes...

I totally have a girl crush on this chick, she was just so pretty and such an awesome model! Also I've never had a model who looked so comfortable in her skin. Sexy! 

This was neat as this last model was my very first model back when I did life drawing one day at age 15 or 16...I think her name is Vivian but mostly I just remember her really badass tattoo. Maybe I can dig up some of those drawings at some point to compare! Also trying some different conte strokes with these 3, kinda like where it's going...

More stuff (yes, color!) coming at the end of this weekend. Got the house to myself

and my projects for 4 days in a row and I plan to use them well. : )