The birth of Henrietta

Juggling a few assignments, I move on to Henrietta. Wow... what a hairdo! This exercise is about foreshortening and of course continues building on the skills of drawing the figure. I was able to rough out her form in line this morning and will building on her the next few days. Now if I can just get a hairstylist in to help her with that mop!

And seeing these pictures side by side, I can already see where I need to make adjustments. FUN!

Figure drawing

Trying to see what the best way to start a figure drawing is. I've tried the boney landmarks, drawing the major shapes, drawing the bones and/or muscle. Seems like proportions get skewed in most cases. This is one of those times where I wish I was in an on-site art class where I could just look up at the teacher with big, round eyes and say... HELP!

St. Sebastian and friend

Another stab at and more practice with figure drawing. The guy on the left is a practice drawing from the Art Instruction School course. The attempt at the right is from Antonello da Messina's painting of St. Sebastian. I was focused on shadow and proportion and didn't even attempt the facial features (in good time, my friends... in good time).

Human shapes

For this sketch, I focused on drawing the forms I saw in the body: cones, spheres, cubes. Then I shaded in and smoothed over the straight edges. This is fascinating study and I can see now why artists spend a lifetime studying the subtleties of the human form.

Human time!

Looks like the home stretch for the AIS course. The next several lessons cover drawing the human figure. What I've been waiting for! I started to sketch and didn't like what I was seeing (is this a nightmarish, recurring pattern or what??) but kept at it. The exercise was to just look at a picture they provide and do a rough sketch, going for shape and proportion and shading. So this too will be a new journey, a new adventure. Because I really look forward to the day when I can draw people and cartoons. It's a driving urge, not sure why. But for whatever its worth, here are the results of day #1.