Catchup

Warning! This post contains images of nude figure drawings. If this is NSFW for you, you've been warned!

I have, unfortunately, let this blog go. For a week. Or two? What was it... I missed a weekly posting, at least. Sinus infection = me staring at the TV on the couch = needing to catch up with work and school = blog getting shoved to the background. But ah, look! You get a veritable smorgasbord for your patience, as I'll now just put up everything.

Anatomy is giving me a lot of opportunities to do... long charcoal drawings. So much so that I'm thinking of tweaking my charcoal technique in order to "get artistic" with them, since the drawings themselves are coming out pretty solid. These two skeletal drawings took several hours each:



They're both done on white paper that's toned with charcoal, then the lights picked out with an erasure and the darks shaded in with charcoal pencil. I'm really thinking of switching to a big charcoal stick for some of the shading though, to loosen it up a little and make application go a bit faster.

I was told last week by the instructor that for the exercises, taking a long time is really a luxury, and he's curious what I could do in less time. So, I limited myself to an hour each with this past week's exercises. I was actually pretty happy I could get down what I did, though I didn't have time to really linger on subtleties and "learn" them. Hopefully he won't mind if I go back to my lingering. I have no idea how we're supposed to learn what a knee really looks like if we're not given time to figure it out!


The thing is, I can do the basic vine drawing for things like this in 10-15 minutes. It's the rendering of the light and shadow and all the little variations in-between that takes forever. So I'm thinking, if I start messing with a half-stick of charcoal instead of the thinner pencil, maybe I can get it down faster, and a little looser as well. I'm sure if nothing else, I'll get even MORE charcoal under my fingernails!

I'm loving the still life painting course - whatever it is I'm doing there, I seem to be doing it right. I did this charming little display of cat toys last week with a limited palette: black, white, terra rosa, yellow ochre, and cadmium yellow. It's amazing what all can be brought out just through those colors.


This week we're using the full palette, but without black - ultramarine and burnt umber instead. Working with the limited palette really does get you thinking very frugally about color. When you can see what you can do with so little, just the barest spots of real red or real yellow make a big difference. I found it also keeps things muted and realistic. We'll see how that keeps up with the full palette paintings this week.

Last but certainly not least, I got to start on a new commission, just in the sketching stage so far. This is very neat because it's a fictional character, and not really a World of Warcraft character, plus Victorian-themed with a lot of fun stuff to play with. She lives a bit of a double-life, so one portrait will be a photographed mugshot, and the other will be a formal oil painting. I'll do both digitally, so there's going to be a lot of development and experimentation. So far, we just have the sketches to start with.



Now that I'm all caught up, I've got more time again for general sketching and on-the-side drawing and painting fun. Hopefully I'll be able to keep that up and throw some of that stuff up here soon, too. =)

Out of Nothing

Warning! This post contains images of nude figure drawings. If this is NSFW for you, you've been warned!

A day late here, waylaid by the yearly sinus troubles. Thankfully the antibiotic is kicking in and I have some energy today. So! A quick catch-up entry while I finish my coffee.

Classes started up last week, though the first week is always rather slow to start. The still life painting course did start us up with a little grayscale exercise - "choose two simple white objects" the assignment suggested, so I go bounding off to gather up a Wii remote and oven timer. Let's start off on the right foot, I say!



I was very curious about the whole oil painting thing, because I've figured it's been something I've been doing wrong for quite awhile, having taught myself. From what I've gathered so far, I haven't been "doing it wrong" any more than I'd been drawing wrong - it just all gets down to process. That's really the beauty I've found in AAU courses that I haven't found in others I've taken. I've taken drawing courses that have you do a lot of exercises - negative space drawing, contour line drawing, various subject matter - and that's all great practice and perspective - but the actual process of drawing I've learned in the AAU courses have been ten times more valuable.

I always maintain that the most important part of drawing is learning to draw what you see and not what you think - at least for drawing that has any connection to realism. At the same time, even if you're working purely based on your own imagination, you need a logical process. And that logical process I've been taught in the past year has been the most useful thing.

Step 1: Draw a rough sketch or a thumbnail of what you want to draw. Get an idea.
Step 2: Start with a large form. Rough out smaller forms via measurement, sighting, and careful observation.
Step 3: Refine the line drawing. Designate light and shadow sides.
Step 4: Fill in shadow/light tone.
Step 5: Refine values.

Those steps, every time, create a nice drawing. Step 2 is always the most difficult - it's the real *drawing* part. But once you get through Step 2 successfully, you're sailing.

And what I found last week, it works exactly the same for paint. Sure there's more to do with color and such, but the basics of defining the drawing, the light and shadow sides, then refining all worked the same way. Having that *process* down is just such a confidence booster.

I think one of the biggest mistakes we make is to look at a part of a subject, or a whole idea, and think, "That's too much, that's too difficult." Then we tend to concentrate on that difficult part and put it before all others. I think it's the reason why those who work primarily on drawing portraits, for instance, tend to work on the central features - the eyes, ears, nose and mouth - and forget about the rest of the head. So they'll have a very nice face with an undersized head and poorly-rendered hair. Likewise, in painting something (and I've often done this) we'll get all caught up in rendering the details of the main subject that the background and environment falls into obscurity, despite it being so important to the subject itself. I think of all the airplane paintings I did with very nicely-rendered aircraft and very basic, cheesy land/sky backgrounds, and I just shake my head.

The work has to be seen as a *whole*. And stepping through a process, for whatever subject matter it is, helps it all come together.

I've always felt there's a bit of magic that goes on when you take a blank white sheet of paper or canvas and create art, and put something there that looks like something that wasn't there before. The hardest thing is always making that decision to put that first mark on the page. Where do you put it? What will it become? So often, if you start with the idea of "this line is the eyebrow of a person" that first line will be off, then the whole rest of the drawing will be off. But if you use that first line to define "A person goes here" - and that's *ALL* - then you've started something that can slowly be worked up into something accurate to its source, whether real or imagined.

My first anatomy drawing this semester was a torso study, of a sadly thin woman (I want to feed her cookies!) I'm not used to drawing half a body on a page. I wondered for a moment how I would get it right. I ended up starting with one long vertical line, that ran (and still runs) from the base of her neck to her legs pressed together. That was the start of the process.


She's not perfect - her head is a little small, I'm sure some other things are a bit off - but in other ways, it's that miracle of the process again. Line by line, shape by shape, form by form. Out of nothing.

The Past and the Future

There was a day back in the year 2000, when I said to myself, "I think I'll try painting airplanes." I'm not sure where this idea came from. I'd gone to a couple airshows, was playing Flight Sims and building models as a hobby. I bought a few beautiful books of airplane photos, mostly warbirds. Then one day I decided I'd figure out how to paint them.

It was the first time I seriously ventured into any artistic arena, and I'm not sure why I hit on airplanes. I'd always drawn portraits and animals, not airplanes. But I did some drawings, copying those beautiful photographs, then got some brushes and canvases and oils, and in the summer of 2001 I sold my first painting. It was pretty exciting. And I just took it from there.

I had no idea what I was doing. For the next four years I did the best I could, learning as I went, taking commissions, painting a lot of X-planes and P-51 Mustangs. I donated a painting to the Civil Air Patrol and ended up doing a big commission for their Headquarters in Washington. I had my stuff put on veteran's calendars and inside model kit boxes and all kinds of fun things. And I had no idea what I was doing.

I simply wore out from the scrabble. Imagine trying to climb a mountain with no equipment, instead creating cleats and picks and ropes and things from the rocks and scrub around you. For as far as I was able to go with it, it exhausted me. When I finally called it quits, I didn't pick up a pencil again to draw, at all, for the next eight months.

The above UH-1E Huey, a Marine gunship from VMO-2 in 1966, is my first piece of aviation art since 2005. It was a commission from a friend. It's drawn in charcoal - which I'd never used for an aircraft before - and was researched on an Internet so much more expanded and easy-to-use than it was just 6 years ago. I enjoyed the research, I enjoyed the history, I enjoyed drawing and rendering the aircraft itself. It didn't quite hold the same magic and excitement as aviation art had for me once before, though. Would I do another aircraft? Oh sure, of course, any day. But I'm pretty sure I'll never pursue it - "I'm going to paint airplanes!" - the way I once did.

After I finished up the Huey, I ended up pulling up these PDF versions of Andrew Loomis' books I've had saved for a while. Andrew Loomis was one of the greatest illustrators of the 20th century, and is referenced in a lot of illustration and drawing classes. In 1939 he put out his first book, "Fun with a Pencil." It's very lighthearted and has a wonderful style to it that just yells "1930's". At the same time, his easy-to-follow system of deconstructing heads and bodies, features and faces, is invaluable.

I've never been a cartoonist. It's something I consider a weakness now, as I struggle to capture movement or emotion in an efficient number of lines. I spent the next three days drawing Loomis' heads out of his book. Pages and pages of them.



Now I want to go back to my mugshots and try to do cartoon faces that capture character and expression. The next part of the book is about bodies and figures, and I'm looking forward to that, too. My Anatomy class started Monday, and I can't wait to get drawing. What excites me now isn't a certain thing in my head that I want to draw or paint, but rather gaining the tools and abilities to draw whatever comes to mind. Maybe it will be an airplane. Maybe it will be three people working on an airplane and a car driving up in the foreground to drop off a passenger.

Starting to climb the mountain, this time I've got cleats on. THAT is exciting.