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

Quality over Quantity?

Got me some cool PS brushes so decided to play around. I finally decided to start on all the style sketches I collected during my time in China cause the styles there are....rather different from

the western standard. I was so content with these I decided to play around more and...

This one was inspired by Zena Holloway's epic underwater photography. Some call it cheesy, but I managed to stare at her stuff for over an hour with my jaw dropped. The pose is somewhat referenced one of the shittier life drawings I made from sometime this fall.

In other news....I biked 160 km completely this week! Hopefully can do it again the next week and the next week and the next week....Lifedrawing was not so often visited but managed to get some decent long poses in for a change which I will dump on you next weekend. 

Le Weekend est finalement bien passé!

I don't have much to say this week, it's been hellish, 

but I've had more free time so here goes:

Let my politically correct challenge begin! 

A day of endless bus rides in ghetto areas of town. Love how bizarre people are here.

Did these while waiting for my computer updates to finish. I think I'm that cool. 

I think they were basically one minute gestures...better

than the shit I do in extra life in one minute..huh.

Don't get them? Look below. The play count is for one day..and I'm still going.

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?

My 2 cents on Walking and other things

I have no problem with spending my days climbing ladders, biking 40 km, going to muay thai, lifting heavy crap, but after two months of uh....my princess feet not really touching the ground, it seems I am no longer capable of walking. Last Monday I spent a day without my bike and I thought I would have a breakdown by the end of the day. (I might as well be married to my bike I fear..) The morning I spent on TV dressed up as the Grinch. No I'm not kidding, watch the video. Afterwards I had to spend the day walking form place ot place in a suburban town and wow....Canada is a damn big country. Being the frugal "lady" that I am, I decided to not take the bus (also my wallet usually has a stick of gum and an empty debit card) and walk everywhere. And while I may not have looked exactly like the above image, I came pretty damn close..

So onto some more interesting things dans ma vie!

Here are a few sketches of some fantsatic ladies from the trip I took to Boston with my parents at the beginning of the month. And no, none are exaggerated. The crazy looking one with the coffee my dad and I called "shustrik" which roughly translates as..spaz. The woman was constantly on edge and never seeemd to like the idea of putting a lid on her coffee...then run around with it crashing into people. We enjoyed her company. : )

Life drawing has been going down the drain the last few weeks, but I'll put up a whole post on Tuesday of this week. I managed to lose a whole newsprint of half decent sketches from the last few weeks...and the rest I have is papsmear...but I'll make you cringe either way. Mostly I've kind of broken myself back down to basics and started to focus more on form and rigidity of the body instead of my usual curvaceous flowing stuff. (especially after someone told me I have my "style" > : ( though Im undecided whether its a good or bad thing) ) Anywho, more on that come Tuesday.

I've also been working an event called "Screemers" in Toronto for the past few weeks, which mostly sucks balls, as it's composed of poorly dressed fat people or drunk teenagers getting the crap scared out of them by a few haunted houses. I just sit there selling glowing swords because I can..But amidst my shift I saw this fantastic pikachu costume, and the guy wearing ti was just...I'm not sure how to describe him but I think I captured his whole persona pretty well. AMong other things, I saw a few fights, (blood and stretchers and everything) got profusely hit on by a really hot blond girl (which only confirmed my boss's hypothesis of me swinging both ways...no idea where that came from) reunited a long lost love, lost a bunch of money and started a light show with some shuffling by taping together glowing stuff and doing my kung fu moves. Yeah, while most people my age spend it partying with friends,  that's how I spend my holidays...

And lastly, today I watched an AWESOME movie (I actually watched TV for the first time in...over a month and a half at least). It's a french films called "Le Roi et L'oiseau" (The King and the Bird) based on one of H.C Andersen's fairy tales which I grew up on. It was done in the 80's and took over 15 years to make. The character designs were so fantastic, the emotion so vivid and the story was so good I could not resist sketching some of the characters from the film for later reference and stuff. It might come off a bit slow to those who are not avid animation fans, but seriously, give it a go. Also for the snobs who stand by Miyazaki...guess which film gave him a ton of inspiration for his future work? Yup, you guessed it, Paul Grimault's work. 

Lastly, did you guys see my hand stuff, particularily my hand rotation?? Any critique (bad or good) would be super helpful as I know there are mistakes but I cant quite see them yet. Check them out here!

So enough ranting for this week, see y'all Tuesday!

Who wants to join into the epic art challenge??

So...did I do it?   Check it yo, by clicking here.

Whoa...but wait, that's only 50!  Indeed. I have set the bar a bit too high. I also went on a trip for the long weekend and then straight to work so I had one week where I did not even touch a sketch book. Plus my work hours have gone up to full time....so. We are gonna call it the 20 week challenge, or at least that's what I'm going to go by. Check the link for full details and go join. Cause I want you to improve and get into your programs of choice too. (cough cough, Marco and Angie...) Or just be awesome. Either way works.

Otherwise, life drawing was a waste of time the last two weeks for me and I threw out quite a few newsprints in frustration. The few okay things that I did manage to cough up I'll lump in with next weeks post. Now I need some sleep. Tootles!

ps: if you haven't already GO CHECK THE LINK YO: The Epic Art Challenge