Erik’s 100 Day Challenge: Say More With Less

[erikdennes]

DAY 1

 

I’ll start things off with one of the last drawings I did when we still had live drawing sessions from a model.  Hopefully those days will be with us again.   In a couple of Vilppu’s videos he mentions intentionally doing things in his drawing process to slow himself down.  I can really relate to that.  In this challenge, I want to slow down, be more deliberate and say more with less.  I am working through several of the NMA courses currently, the Costume Figure course, and the Russian Drawing course.  I’ll post work from those endeavors as well as other stuff I am working on to try and improve.

[Dennis Postula]

nice drawing I like the portraits you posted. Regarding this drawing, try tracing over her left leg and then shifting it over to the left

[erikdennes]

DAY 1

5 to 10 minute sketches from the Costume Drawing Course.

[erikdennes]

10 minute lay in.

[elizabeth hone]

Hi erik

nice sketches.

[erikdennes]

Day 2

Doing Glenn Vilppu’s advanced figure drawing lessons: Vine charcoal.

[erikdennes]

Thanks so much. I am beginning to see some payoff for all of the hard work. Gives me encouragement to keep at it.

[erikdennes]

Day 2

From Vilppu’s lecture. Blocked in from the reference and took a break. Finished from imagination because I couldn’t find the reference again.

[erikdennes]

Day 3

Figure Study.  I was really trying to emphasize the gesture lines in the construction and state everything as clearly and as simply as possible when doing the shading.

 

 

• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by erikdennes.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by erikdennes.

[Debbie H]

Hi Erik. Welcome to the challenge! You’ll find the time will fly. Great drawings! One small comment if you’d like one – your heads seem a little on the small side. How are you finding Glenn’s teaching? He’s amazing isn’t he! Out of interest, in which videos does he talk about slowing down? There’s a lot to learn from all of the teachers on NMA. Keep up the great work!

[erikdennes]

Thanks Deborah.  I can’t recall the exact video where he talked about slowing down, sorry.  Another comment he made that has stuck with me is that the natural tendency is to copy reference, so he goes out of his way to keep from doing that.  He rarely uses the same lighting as the reference preferring often to use modeling tone or conceptual light where the center of the form gets the strongest light and the sides are in shadow.  He will often change the pose as well to better explain the action.  I am constantly amazed by the quality of instruction on this site, and they keep adding more!!

[erikdennes]

Day 4

Ink portrait on toned paper from imagination.

[erikdennes]

Day 5

Not much time today. Just a handful of quick profile studies.

[erikdennes]

Day 6

This is a copy of a piece done by Illustrator Kevin Keele. I learned the importance of having well designed shapes where the dark and light shapes weave into each other as well has having confident mark making and slowing way down in the halftone areas.

[erikdennes]

Day 7

I tried to apply what I learned on day 6 to a more realistic portrait.

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