Bertha breathes

Shading and drawing, oh my! Working on giving Bertha some interesting looks and some cool folds. I'll make her attractive yet!

Bertha

This is the final assignment drawing. I have to show I can draw clothing on a figure... too bad it couldn't have been on a lady who smiles! Yeeeesh! You can bet I won't be bringing this lady home to mom. She looks like she just found out her pet amoeba died. Oh well, work with what you have.

More drapery

I'm supposed to draw the different folds you see in the picture. So I've spent more than several days trying to match up lines and shades and tones.

I want to say that this is so much fun and that I'm having a blast, but that would be a lie. It's tedious and frustrating. I feel like a copier copying one image to create an exact duplicate.

But what I really don't like is that I'm trying to PERFECTLY reproduce a picture. I'm fighting AGAINST perfectionism yet I find that for this assignment, I have to get every line and curve just so.

I can see already that some of the proportions are out of whack. The shading is off and it doesn't match PERFECTLY the picture we're drawing off of.

I want to have fun when I draw and this is NOT fun. But I'm sure that what I'm learning here will translate into being able to create looser, more creative artwork. Let's hope so. In the meantime, I have to shake the cramp out of my hand!

Just smile...

Folds and stuff

A quick people sketch (clothed I might add!) and some more drapery. All this black and white pencil work is numbing. Might have to go get some finger paint and go to town!

Fashion Design 101?

I'm guessing this isn't quite unlike dressing up paper figures with clothes (only I'm doing the artowrk!). Ruby Anne here gets a nice outfit from JCPenney complete with outdated stripes and outlandish hair do. The good news is, I don't have any plans on becoming a fashion designer!

Pretty in a dress

Hands and faces are still giving me fits! But hey, ain't she perty?

And still more...

Okay, you may be bored looking at these. But when I'm a world-famous artist, you're going to say... "I knew Mark when he was putting up all these funky sketches on a blog." Then they'll put all these sketches in a book then make a movie of my life. So if you're not part of this process now, you won't get a cut of my movie profits. Howz that grab ya??

Still at it

Human form, clothing, wrinkles, shading, posing, proportion. Practice, practice, practice...

Suiting up

This is jock strap boy with some clothes on. Until you get the particulars of the human body right, the clothes just aren't going to look right. Working on the folds and how the clothing drapes over the body.

Tooning around

Worked on a lot of stuff today and always wishing I was farther ahead than I am. So for the heck of it, I did some tooning. Working on forms and faces and such. Maybe it's time to create my own happy little world of toons! Stranger things have happened...

Drapery

Now on to the art of drawing folds known as drapery. This is all leading to putting clothes on figures (as well as being able to draw and shade folds). So now my respectable nudes can put on some respectable clothing. But for this morning, I got to learn how to respectably dress the corner of a table.

Jock strap boy... gridless!

Yep, you guessed it. Jock Strap Boy is now free to roam the building. I put him on the lightbox this morning and traced him without the grid lines. The exercise is getting a bit easier and flows smoother. This assignment calls for just a line drawing so I'm going to finish him up tomorrow morning and send the whole gang in for a grade.

Jock strap boy

,

Next assignment is to do a line drawing of this guy I affectionately call, Jock Strap Boy (for obvious reasons). This gets handed in with the Suzy and Henrietta drawings I did earlier. I decided to try my hand at a grid which is helping me to lay out the proportions better. After I finish the preliminary drawing, I'll put him on a light box and transfer him without the grid.


Even with all my griping I have to admit, drawing the human body is a fascinating challenge. And like anything else, the more I practice drawing the shapes and lines, the better I get at it.


I'm more intrigued by the female form if only because I have yet to come across one wearing a jock strap. And no, this is not a picture of me back in college posing for the yearbook.

Male figure practice

On to the male figure assignment, then drapes and clothing, then the final portfolio. Then maybe I can come out of my room and play! :)

Henrietta and Suzy -- DONE!

I've had it with these two women. Erasing, drawing, erasing, sketching, erasing, shading. You get the idea. Time to send them in for a grade. Women seem to be my biggest challenge in life AND in art!

Black Artagain

Nothing particular in mind... just rummaged through my art box and found some paper I haven't used in awhile. Chalk, white conte, mask, charcoal... you name it, it's on paper now. The first one is chalk on sketch paper. Nice and messy!

Suzy getting shaded

Making progress on Suzy...

It absolutely amazes me how the slightest adjustments to the lines of the eyes changes the whole expression and character of the face. Let's just say that Suzy has undergone a number of eye changes in this whole process and I'm still not happy with the result. Nevertheless... let the shading continue!

Fall Spectacular

Sometimes you just can't resist picking up your camera and heading outside on a gorgeous - but rare - fall day in Ohio.

Gord n' Hand

Slowly but surely, I've been working on my Henrietta and Suzy drawings. Shading, sketching, ERASING! Shading, sketching, ERASING! My paper has a lot of holes in it but doggone it, I'll have my drawing!

In the meantime, enjoy these lovely sketches of my hand and a gord I drew this morning as warm up exercises.

Stand by for stand by!