Cast Drawing

Here we have a cast drawing that took roughly 4 hours to complete. It is in sanguine chalk and wax pencil and roughly 8x10". Against the big taboo this one is from a photograph but only until I can source a real cast for myself. I had one of those days (which happens a lot) where you wake up and haven't a clue where to start. During the week I purchased some Glen Vilppu drawing videos, I like him quite a lot, he draws open handed (which I still can't do) and teaches in a similar way to how I have been taught. So I didn't want to do a still life this week, I wanted to do something related to the figure.

One of my biggest problems right now is how to structure my home learning. I can't afford more than a couple of classes per term and yet I need to progress, it's very hard to know where to go. I don't think I need weekly tuition so much now as I've been given plenty of teaching to go on but I do need regular practice. Added to this pressure is the fact that my actual job can really drain my energy, I am often very tired when I get home during the week, this is before I mention there is a baby on the way in 11 weeks :) One thing  I am going to do is look for some weekend figure drawing classes in my home city of Edinburgh. Hopefully that will give me a chance to experiment a bit more with what I am learning.

This drawing was useful to do. I discovered that it is best to lay down the chalk pencil first and then use the waxy version on top to give your darkest darks. These pencils are quite permanent and don't erase as easilly as willow charcoal. At my last class I had a problem where I was rubbing off the charcoal from my drawing with the palm of my hand. This caused a problem because just when I had got some of the drawing about right, I then accidentally got rid of it later on causing me too keep chasing my tail. I love the way you can constantly keep knocking back willow charcoal but I'm starting to think that sometimes something more permanent is not necesarilly a bad thing.

Studio MK 2

I don't have any art this week but for good reason. I spent all of my Saturday art time putting up shelving and re-organising my home studio. Well... it's a small room really but it's my studio none the less. I used to have everything including my PC on the one desk but for 3D work that doesn't cut it and so I decided to bite the bullet and buy another desk. This means I can have everything 3D related on one desk and have another table for drawing- it works really well. I've mainly been concentrating on drawing since Christmas and this will continue but recently I've been getting the itch to do something in zbrush, just to remind myself that I can still  sculpt and now that we don't use it in work I miss it a lot. I'm hoping that my recent MAS classes in anatomy will will help with my sculpting.

I have a lot of books, in fact I was a little disturbed when I saw them all in the one place like that. There's some Graphic Novels, Art of books, lots of animation books from years ago which I absolutely love and quite a bit of photography. But I love books and I look at them for inspiration all the time. The drawing board has various small still life studies on it at the moment. I find that posting up your work somewhere and being able to see your progression is really helpful. Next week's post will have some artwork I promise!

M.A.S Weekend Course

This week I have a few examples of work done from the weekend classes I am attending. The Black and white charcoal drawing is most recent. It's not quite as finished as I would have liked but it does represent some progress on my part. For example I am now using willow charcoal comfortably and able to stand at an easel and draw- I used to hate easels. It was a tough one to do, a real battle back and forth but I was trying trying out various things with this and they all worked. I was seeing things happening in front of my eyes, knocking back areas, ballancing the whole picture, recognising the errors and not panicking (all too easy to do).

The paintings don't quite work but I'm not going to be too hard on myself because this was the first time that I have painted in about 15 years and also the first time I've attempted these techniques. We were drawing with large Filbert brushes and the model was moving quite a lot- I found this quite hard. About 3/4 through each of these I started to get the idea, so I'm going to try it again with the benefit of hindsight and see how it goes in round 2.

But right now I'm content, you learn to be pleased with the progressions that you have made, whatever they are and even if they are small; I don't think it's likely that you would master these techniques first time. It wasn't so long ago that I was in that first weekend class and came out with nothing. I'm starting to get it, I just need to keep going.