Head Studies

Twenty minutes each. Almost forgot. Another New Year's Resolution I have is to get faster and better at portraits, so I'm going to endeavor to do at least an hour's worth of heads for practice before I go to bed every night. Here's two I did a couple of days ago.

Happy New Year!

Eaton Canyon

Two hours. 8" x 10". Two of my New Year's Resolutions are to get better at depicting color relationships and creating believable environments, so I'm going to do as many plein air paintings as humanly possible. This one's admittedly quite messy, but it's a start.

Here's to a productive 2009!

Roxanne

Four hours. Been a while since I've done one of these, so I felt a bit rusty today. Such a pleasure to be working again with just charcoal though; it was like catching up with an old friend.

Toni

Two-minute quick sketches and an hour-and-a-half long pose. I always have a tough time drawing Toni for some reason, but tonight I didn't struggle as much. My instructor Glen helped clarify and contain some of my wilder shapes.

Sara

Three hours. Sara wore a white horned hat and lace veil for a Christmas-themed portrait tonight, kind of like a reverse Maleficent. There was no way in hell I was going to even attempt rendering the intricacies of all that lace with a three-hour time limit, so I just indicated it as one huge tone. It was fun painting to holiday music! I have been so busy lately, I had forgotten that it was that time of the year again.

Murphy Batman & Saladang Sketches

A couple of pages from my mini moleskine. I'm limiting myself to ballpoint pen sketches because they make me commit to my marks and force me to discover new ways of indicating features and forms with just line. I'm more of a painter than a draftsman (meaning, I have an easier time seeing in terms of tone), so this is my way of attacking that particular weakness of mine. As you can tell, I am making a ton of mistakes, but at least I am learning and can laugh at myself about them.

The adorable dog is James Paick's. He's really hyper (the pup, not my instructor)!

Toni

Variety of quick sketches from two to twenty minutes.

Victoria

Two minute quick sketches and an hour-and-a-half long pose.

Brant

Three hours.

Laura

Twos, fives, a ten, and twenty-fives.

Pocket Monsters & Letecia

I attended a draftsmanship seminar with Marshall Vandruff over the Thanksgiving break and I have to say it was such a breath of fresh air. For some reason or another, I've always been timid about drawing from my imagination - maybe because deep down inside I'm afraid I'm not as competent as I think I might be. Hearing him give his lecture on how easy it can be to draw anything out of your head really instilled in me the confidence to just go for the gusto and give it a shot. I've got to be training that side of myself as an artist anyway, because in order to do concept work I have to make up stuff that doesn't even exist - and I can't always rely on models as crutches to help get the job done.

I often draw monsters or creatures in my sketchbooks, especially if I'm having a particularly stressful day at the office. I can't explain why, but drawing ugly creatures soothes the nerves immensely. I colored the grumpy orc face in Photoshop just to give myself a little bit of painting practice before I head off to bed.

The second image is a pen sketch of my classmate Letecia. Kirk repeated his lecture on the muscles of the leg from last week, so I used that time instead to draw the other students in the room (sorry Kirk). I'm hoping to get faster and more efficient at doing these quick doodles.

Lynette

Two-minute quick sketches and seven-minute leg studies.

Clay

Two-minute quick sketches and an hour-and-a-half long pose.

Alex

Three hours. Alex is a full-time student at LAAFA and the first to introduce me to the school. He's got a really cool and distinctive look.

I'm gonna have to watch my values next go around; the lights are painted too dark in this piece. I always seem to err in one direction or another. Hopefully after a few more paintings I'll wisen up and start nailing the right values consistently.

i-Browse Coffee House

An embarrassing amount of hours was spent on this schematic. This is i-Browse in Alhambra, a coffee house I haunt at night and on the weekends because I get too easily distracted at home to get any work done. Gallery Nucleus used to be across the street.

As I was drawing the line art with graphite, people kept tossing me weird looks because I kept scanning the room, trying to gauge relative distances of pillars and tables. I must've looked pretty funny.

Brianna

Three hours. I switched to painting on smaller 14" x 18" panels so I could get more work done with the time we're allotted for class. I found it actually more difficult because the size of the brushstrokes got relatively bigger as I scaled the canvas size down. I guess that's a good thing since I have a tendency to noodle on tiny details instead of keeping in mind the overall big picture.

I'm pretty happy with the way this one turned out.

Karol

Five hours. Karol's sporting a Josephine Baker-inspired get-up. Even with the added time, I still couldn't finish this painting. The drawing's off too. Sheesh.

Value Studies

One hour each. For my Sketching for Environment class, we were asked to do value studies of landscapes with organic elements in them. These were done at the L.A. Arboretum this past Friday on my day off.

After J.C. Leyendecker

Three hours.

Rajiv

Three hours. I am gradually getting better, faster, and more confident. I had a blast with this one tonight. Rajiv is a terrific model and has fantastic features to paint.

By the way, if any of you were curious, the palette I am using is a "mud" palette that was popularized by Michael Hussar (Sean Cheetham's teacher). He has some really wicked paintings up on his site; check it out when you get the chance.

After J.C. Leyendecker

Three hour master copy after a detail of J.C. Leyendecker's Vacation. I've been struggling with indicating features and volumes efficiently and effectively, so I've decided to copy works from the masters to get a better sense of how to solve these problems. Duplicating other artists' works is the next best thing to drawing from life, because you can absorb their solutions to similar drawing conundrums, thereby adding their strategies to your repertoire.

Jee and Eric

Ten-minute figure drawings of Jee, and five-minute quick sketches of Eric's head. These two are close friends.

Stacy

Four-and-a-half hours. A little experimenting with Zhaoming Wu's style of pushing and pulling charcoal.

Nicole

Twos, fives, and twenty-fives. Trying out a variety of charcoal techniques inspired by Henry Yan's processes. Something a little different from the norm.

Keith

Five-minute studies focusing on delineating the basic structures of the torso and pelvis.

Jonathan

Sloppy two-minute quick sketches and a decent one-hour pose. Jonathan is always fun to draw because of his epic beard. Glenn likens him to Zeus. I agree!

Liz

Three hours. I need to find an uninstructed long pose session that works with my schedule, so I can practice more of these and actually finish one!

Marisa

One-and-a-half hours.

Petra

Five minute quick sketches, and longer studies of twenty-five and forty-five minutes a piece. I'm trying to be more bold with my mark-making; sometimes a daring stroke, even if inaccurate, can appear right to the viewer based on how well it conveys confidence. Even though I see mistakes here and there, it felt good to move through my drawings at an accelerated pace, achieved by placing marks in quick succession.