Chris

Fives and a two-hour pose. Thanks for the help on this one, Stan.

JJ

Threes and fives. The largest quick sketch was done by my instructor Erik Gist - trying to follow his lead!

Doug

Two hours. Beards are tough to draw. Thanks again for the help, Meadow.

Athena

Three hours.

Lynda

Fives and twenty-fives. It was scorching hot the day I drew Lynda, so electric fans were placed all over the workshop to keep things cool. It's not often that one gets to draw a model with her hair blowing in the wind - I had a lot of fun with that one.

Adair

Three to fifteen minutes. Trying to work more on form this term, to help me better invent figures from my imagination.

Erin

Four hours.

Nicole

Eight hours. I wasn't really happy with the finish on the last painting, so I spent some time at the local coffeehouse trying to clean it up. I'm not sure if it turned out better in the end, but going through the effort to address the flaws proved to be a learning experience nonetheless. That's all I can ask for, I suppose.

It's pretty funny, I never realized just how much of Nicole's face I had memorized simply via the sheer act of painting her for four hours. I still vividly remembered the shadow patterns, abstract shapes, and relative values of areas hours after the fact, and thus was able to push and pull with confidence. It was kinda cool.

Nicole

Four hours. More practice with the Wacom tablet. Digital painting from life has so many advantages over the traditional method - I must've moved her facial features half a dozen times to get the placement in the ballpark.

Matthew

Three hours from life.

It's been a while since I've updated this blog.

A couple of weeks ago I went to Reverie, a symposium of art and design hosted by the folks who run the concept design outfit Massive Black and the community portal ConceptArt.org. While I didn't learn as much as I would have liked to (it's a tall order to top the quality of arts education here in Southern California), I did walk away from the experience having attained new-found respect for the caliber of the industry's top professionals, formed what I hope are lasting relationships with a handful of new artist friends, and was given thoughtful advice on where to go with my studies from here on out.

The best critique I got was from local instructor Marshall Vandruff, who diagnosed me to a "T" when he said that, while I am good at mimicking the style of others, I so far have not bothered to express my own voice in my work. He is absolutely right. The hardest transition an artist, or any creative individual for that matter, will have to make is stepping out of the shadows of his influences and developing his own signature style. Many never survive this shift. I myself am determined to.

I've got a number of ideas on how to go about doing this, but many involve working in isolation for an extended amount of time. I may not be able to update this blog as often as I have in the past, but rest assured I am not idle, just working on my personal development as best I know how. Thanks to all who've been following along - I really appreciate you sticking around so long. I'll be back shortly.