Sketchbook

I have gotten a few books that were suggested by the very creative Myrna Wacknov.  She is always experimenting and playing around with many different ideas.  One of the books I already love is Drawing Labs for Mixed Media Artists. So with out further ado here are the results from my first lab.

My first set of Cats.

These cats are from my imagination. I am not comfortable drawing from an image in my head. I am impressed with all of them. They all turned out better than I thought. Although there are a few that clearly are much better than others.

Cats With Color

This is me taking it further. I wanted to experiment and go to the next step so I went out and bought a set of markers. I have no idea how to use them, but I am sure I will have fun learning.

I had a lot of fun and it really helped motivate me for the rest of the week. So much fun.

Week 3:

Gallery

Day By Day

Day 10: I realized that these stick figures are actually really helping me see the angles of the body in a different way. I must concentrate on the figure as a whole and think more about the abstract shapes that it makes as one.  Who knew you could learn from from stick figures?!

Day 11: Actually day 11 only consisted of the two figures on the left and the head oval. I became very frustrated after the bottom figure and decided to call it a day before I went to work.

Day 12: I came up with a happy medium between the stick figures and the more detailed drawings. I was planning on just doing a few more gestures today (Saturday, Day 14) and calling it a week, but last night I had the over-whelming urge to draw some gestures so I did.

Day 13: Technically these were done on day 14, but I am grouping them sort of, by 10s and just calling those days. Again I figured I would just sit down and do 10 for today and that’s it. I would confess my sins of playing Ninja Warrior on Facebook for an entire day. (Well technically I ended up sleeping 12 hours until 2 o’clock in the afternoon and only stayed up until about midnight, so not really an entire day and I blame my little brother. It’s so his fault.)  However…..

Day 14:  I ended up modifying the stick figures so that I would hopefully have something that could be done quickly as well as help me get the proportions a bit more accurate. I believe I did 15 of these as well as flip back to Day 11 and fill in the page for a total of 50 gestures. By a nose on this one…

I will also say that Ninja Warrior was not my only pit fall.

The last two weeks have been a bit crazy. However, from the craziness came good. I was able to spend some fantastic time with my best friends and I think we all needed it no matter it came about by the tragic loss of another friend. Sometimes it takes a tragedy to make you drop everything that “needs” to be done in order to focus on your real priorities, such as loved ones.  Danielle will be missed greatly by her friends and family, luckily, for us she made the world a better place while she was with us and her memory will live on for a very long time.

Week 2 I decided to change things up a bit, out of necessity and to try something different. I love Sharon’s style so I decided to take a small tip from her work. While Sharon does do the full figure, I wanted to work as fast as she does. I was very distracted this week with getting a new blog (thanks to Nick for helping me figure it out) and a few minor house hold issues that took a lot of time.  I also have been very curious about the differences between how illustrators work as opposed to fine artists.  The first 4 days I just concentrated on getting a line of action and trying to express the movement. I think doing fast, stick-figure drawings really helped me see a bit of the difference in the approach. I loved seeing the motion and the movement. It helped me get a sense of the slight weight adjustments the body makes.  By the 5th day I was bored with the stick-figures. They are very fun and I will most likely go back to them, maybe start to develope them a bit more as I get faster. To keep myself interested in the project though I went and bought another reference book by Mark Edward Smith. This is The Nude Figure: A Visual Reference for the Artist. I will try to add a link on the side bar.

I remember once in a class I was in where there was an illustrator w/ a bunch of fine artists, the question came up what’s the difference between the two and is there a difference? The disappointing point was that the illustrator wouldn’t participate. She would say we were wrong about something but not actually give her reasons.  I think that there are and there are not differences. It’s also a question that will  most likely never be answered or could be answered.  I also understand her frustration at having to defend her art for what was probably the millionth time, but I was more interested in hearing her discuss it than actually figuring out if illustration was the same as fine art.  Any thoughts?

Premise:
Sharon over at ArtBySaw just finished a project she titled 50 Cars/50 Days. I know, her title creativity is genius. Anyway, she wanted to start something else and she came up with 30 Days/300 Figures. I believe she changed the title of it, but whatever. I jumped on the bandwagon and here we go….

Day 1.
It’s taking me a bit to get into the groove of gestures. I started out doing 5 minute gestures, but it seems a bit much. Maybe if I was doing watercolor because then I would need time for the painting to dry. As it is I am using a smallish notebook (one that I bought in Santa Fe, it’s pretty) and I am using pencil. I am relearning everything my life drawing 101 teacher told us as I go.

I started a day late so this week I only have 4 days, but I am doing 12 gestures a day instead of 10. (10 gestures 5 days a week x 30 days = 300 figures)

Day 2
The first day I used an ebook, but I quickly became bored so I switched to the book that I have. I am continuing to loosen up.

Day 3
If a gesture is not going to go the way I want it I do erase it and start over. I know I should get rid of the eraser, but my sketchbook is so nice that I don’t want really ugly sketches in it…just slightly ugly.

Day 4
I was really able to loosen up on the fourth day. I was always told that for gestures, because they are so fast, you need to get to the important part of the pose right away. On these two pages I was able to let myself leave a good chunk of the figure out in order to focus on the important parts and to do it much faster than the other 3 days.

If you want to join along leave a link to your site in the comments after your first post.

Note: Originally posted on 10/9/09 at blog.limitedpalette.com

I thought I would give everyone a glance at a full page (or two) from my sketchbook. Some poses hold my attention for a moment, while others hold it for quite awhile. Not to mention some aspects of the poses are more interesting to me than the entire thing.

The past few days I have been alternating work on my painting and these sketches. I thought I would do a landscape as my painting because I was sick of the figure, but as it turns out these quick sketches are far more interesting to me than that painting.

Tomorrow is the show! More people than I imagined are taking the time to drive up and see the show. I’m very excited! This will be some of my family’s first glimpse of my work. Get ready Chicago, we are going to paint the town RED!

Note: Originally posted on 8/5/09 at blog.limitedpalette.com

I wish I could say this was a quick sketch, but I worked on it for about 45 minutes. I took a break from organizing my office and writing my artist statement and I got lost in the curve of the waist, weight of the breast, etc.  There’s a reason the female form has been drawn and painted so much over the centuries, there’s a captivating quality in how all the pieces are put together. The shapes that the body makes and the lines that form are intriguing and beautiful. And the most perfect thing about it all is that every woman embodies this trait. It is inherent in all of us. It’s just how we are made and I love honoring that and spreading that message, even if it is just for 45 minutes in between mundane chores.

Before the end of school I bought a book to use for sketching when I did not have a model handy, which unfortunately is the case more often than not now that I am not in school. The book is The Nude Female Figure: A Visual Reference for the Artist by: Mark Edward Smith. He has a few more books out as well. They are filled with all kinds of poses and different body types. His other books contain men and women. I hope to acquire them all in the future, but for now this one is more than sufficient.

News:

I am currently working on a series from my recent travels. I am going to have roughly six pieces finished for an art festival in southern Illinois held in September. I hope to have the first piece finished by early next week. I am taking photos of the process and will post them to give everyone a better sense of what it is exactly that I do.

My BFA show is August 6th Again I will be sure to have a few photographs to share.

My website will be debuting very shortly. Definitely before the September show, but perhaps even sooner.

Note: Originally posted 7/15/09 on blog.limitedpalette.com

News: Two of my WIPs are online at DeviantArt. The link is to the left. I have two more, but one is a surprise and they both need to be finished by Friday. I don’t want to take the time to load them twice in a few days because I now have a lot of painting to do.

I also posted a new image of the best painting in the world, just in case you need an excuse to feast your eyes upon it one more time.