Masters Thumbnail Studies

So here's the start of another sketchbook on Great Masters tonal studies. I've done a few of these thumbnails before but they weren't in a sketchbook. All of these are very small; fitting into an A6 book. They're not designed to be exact copies, rather more a method of studying how they laid out tonal values accross a picture. The small size really prevents you from doing any detail work, which is ideal.

These are in order from left to right; a Titian, a Bourguereau and (I think) a Rubens. The Titian was drawn first and is quite tight, in the other 2 I tried to loosen things up a bit. These thumbnails are great for experimenting with what materials work best together- the second drawing uses Conte for the darkest darks and the third uses compressed charcoal.

I enjoy doing these, they're quick to do and remind me what I should be looking out for on larger drawings. So if I get up in the morning and don't know where to start I will do a few of these. Considering a baby is due this week (should have been last week) I need things like this to keep me going when everything goes crazy.

Tone Studies

Following my pretty unsuccessful self portrait and a class last week where the light changed regularly all afternoon I decided that it might be a good idea to study how light affects the head a bit more. Any Art tutor will probably faint/ hurl into a bucket but I decided to start a sketchbook of tonal studies from TV shows/ movies etc- cue Mad Men season 3. This isn't a replacement for life drawing, it's just one sketchbook out of the many that I'm trying to keep. Personally I feel it's a valid thing to do in order to understand light and shade. Of the 3 I like the second one (top right) the best, the third one didn't start off well and has just about turned out OK.

I now have 3 simultaneous sketchbooks: Anatomy study, light and shade/ tonal and a small sketchbook that is more for very basic tonal study and composition- I realised last week that composition is a bit of a weakness. I'll probably add another sketchbook for cafe studies and for keeping in my bag all of the time. Then I intend to start some weekly life drawing when the new term starts up in September.

Added to that I'm mulling over buying a full size easel for home- drawing at one in class is still uncomfortable and doesn't feel natural. I still need to understand how to use charcoal without getting into a mess, so there'll be a bit of exploration of that I think. Maybe some small skin tone oil studies as well. That is my sock btw, bit windy for taking photos.

Abandoned self portrait

Ok, I really didn't want to post this but since I have to post the failures as well as the successes it's going up. There are 2 problems; 1- it doesn't look like me and 2- it's terrible. In actual fact this started off quite like me and fell off a cliff the more I struggled with it.

I'm told the average drawing time is about 3 hours. Well this took 6, I can't believe it took that long but it did and as I write this I am well and truely shattered and defeated. I went through to see the Glasgow Boys exhibition at the Kelvingrove yesterday and at the moment I couldn't feel more opposite to the enthusiasm I had last night after seeing it.

I know what went wrong, for the life of me I still can't control charcoal. I totally get why it is a great medium but it's erasability is it's achilles heel to me. I put construction lines down and very soon they've disappeared, it's smudgy, it's blunt (even with breaking the sticks) and willow charcoal only goes grey at it's darkest.

And by 6 hours in my eyes just don't want to see anymore and I'm done. I'd come back to it but I want to try and manage these in 1 sitting. Sometimes I wonder why I do this to myself. Must repeat and do better.

Break Through Number 2

So.....for the last couple of weeks I' ve been concentrating on keeping an anatomy sketchbook. It seems pretty technical and boring but I' ve been quite enjoying it. I am aware that concentrating too much on this type of drawing is probably bad so I will move on when the time is right but my thinking is to do it just enough to have a better grasp of anatomy and to always keep the sketchbook going on the sidelines.

But the drawings below aren't the breakthrough, in fact some of them are plain wrong- that's OK right now, the main breakthrough is that I have figured out an approach to tackle figure drawing in a logical order. This had previously been a big problem; where to start? Added to this, I seem to have figured out how to draw open handed with the pencil on it's side- another breakthrough, the pencil grip in figure drawing is a big deal IMO.

Why? Well, in the weekend classes I've been to this year I've been given all sorts of great tutoring, ideas, tips and tricks, I've even bombarded the poor teacher for even more info on the train home. I did this because I'm so eager to learn something. I soaked all of these things up like a sponge and pretty soon all I had was a long list of techniques, not necessarily a logic in how to use them. I realised this in my first class when I totally froze up and couldn't draw and interestingly I've seen other people do the same; they come in with a checklist of what they've been told and end up being confused.

I think that this happens because you get shown so many new tecniques in a class, often without repetition- you try one and then quickly move onto the next one, sometimes it has been hard to see how one fits into another, sometimes it plain doesn't make sense. Added to this, different tutors have different styles of teaching and opinions on the subject and really when you are a beginner you are slightly at the mercy of the person teaching you.

But what I've realised is that in order to progress you have to lean less on waiting to be told what to do and find your own way to understanding all of this. My approach lately has been to get less upset at my lack of ability and try and analyse what it is I wasn't doing right, then try and figure it out. So number one was getting the first marks on the page, the gesture, using the pencil. I'm a big believer that when people get upset over their drawings it's not that they can't draw, it's that they don't know how to use the tools. It's a practical thing and it has taken me over a month of drawing simple geometrical shapes to learn how to use the pencil open handed- I am convinced this is a majorly important step.

Next was taking all of this information and putting it in an order I can use, so I have taken some things, discarded others for the meantime and I feel that it's starting to make sense. In one particular class the tutor was more keen for you to draw what you see. This was good in the sense that using your eyes to see is majorly important and usually taken for granted but with a room full of ambient light often these things are very subtle and they forget beginners can't see what they see. This is where having some sort of anatomy knowledge is useful- to show you what you should be looking for.

Normal Service Will Resume Shortly

No updates in a couple of weeks but I have been up to quite a bit, I promise. First of all I have started an anatomy sketchbook which I can't really show on the blog because it's quite a technical type of drawing and may not be that interesting but it has taken up quite a bit of my time. I've been following the Glen Vilppu lectures that I bought last month and so far I think he's excellent and really explains things very well. I have however noticed a few things that he leaves out when I cross reference him with Bammes or Loomis so I still believe learning from a few different sources is the way to go.

Secondly I was on holiday in Skye. I don't think I've ever used the word 'wow' so much on a holiday, it's an unbelievable place and to top things off we had amazing weather. But there is a slight snag as I had intended to do some sketching up there and that would form the basis of this week's post, except.....I failed miserably. I sat on a hill in front of the Quirang mountains, dusted off the watercolor set that I've never used and then proceeded to paint worse than a 6 year old. My water fell over, my paper blew away and my leg fell asleep from having no seat to sit on. Yes, I looked pretty pathetic as I limped back to the car, dragging my leg behind me, tail between my legs. Not good.

Never mind, I can draw a stone bridge right? Er no...no I can't it seems. Pretty horrific just how far my drawing has fallen by the way side but I guess I have to be practical about it. Ok, I couldn't do it, now let's log it in the (rather large) art to do list. It does show you that if you concentrate too hard in one area you really neglect other skills you should be developing. One other big interest of mine is photography, so here are some of my photographs from Skye to browse. Self portrait next I think.

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!