Zoo Drawing Dump

I made two 2 1/2 hour trips to the Toronto Zoo over the weekend and came out with more sketches than I do when I visit for the whole day.

Apologies for the lack of posts lately. I've been busy adjusting to the new job.

My last two figure-drawing classes.

These are from a previous class. The earlier week was a male portrait  and the study of facial expressions. The teacher and the model posed for the facial expressions.

(I apologize for the blurriness of the top image.) 

The portraits above were the later week when we had a female model.

The top portrait is the more accurate of the two. (It is actually pretty dead on, give or take a few minor details.) The bottom one....something went wrong. I'm still trying to figure out what. (Besides the fact that the eyes sizes are bit off.) Her face seems too long. I did measure the length three or 4 times to make sure it was accurate (the width too).... If I had to bet on what it was throwing the whole thing off, it would be the nose. (I had some issues with it.)

This portrait class actually turned out to be a lot of fun. We were working with pastels. I am not a fan of pastels. They seem too dusty and there's something about the texture that I don't like.  (I will give them a bit more of a chance in future life-drawing. I'll experiment with different paper and see if I find a combination that works for me.)

Anyway, I was dreading this class because my pastel renders tend to turn out hideous. I also had to be crafty with the shading as I'm a cheap bastard and only had a few basic colors. :)  I grudgingly started working and had a very happy turn of events.

On a funny note. The model loved my shirt.

6/29/12 - Random sketchbook pages.

Poor to ..... not so poor?

I have a job interview today. Maybe now I will go from being a penniless bum, to a semi-penniless-bum.

Another quick painting.

Fast practice

It doesn't look like much but it's practice.

This took about 20 minutes in Photoshop. I might finish it.


In other news, I've been getting bored of gesture drawing and I've decided to attempt doing some more creative activities. One being designing costumes/clothes for the models I draw every week. I figure they will be exercises in creativity.

Life Drawing Dump

Above is a page of gestures we did to exercise control over the size. I tend to draw large when it comes to life drawing, so this was an interesting challenge.

The first row is 15, 15 second gestures. (I couldn't fit the full 15. I ended up drawing into the previous gesture a lot in an attempt to save space.)

The second row was 10, 1 minute gestures.

The third row was 5, 3 minute gestures. These turned great, in my opinion. (Except for the second from the left. It's stiff and I did not exaggerate the pose.)

Above is a 30 minute reclining pose. As Austin put it, certain parts of my anatomy are getting better while other parts are still behind. This leaves me with a sub par product. I know it sounds very negative to say things like that, but I like to focus on flaws first so I can learn what needs more work.

This was a 20 minute pose.


I forgot to post what I did in my last class. This classes focus was chiaroscuro.

We covered paper (in this case, Kraft Paper) with willow charcoal and used knead-able erasers to shade.The first image was a model under a sheet and then with the sheet removed. The second was a portrait. I was annoyed that it was a side view but there was no room anywhere else. ><