“From Paper to Canvas” – conté and willow

[Jesper Axelsson]

Hi, I went through the lessons and assignments from Joseph Todorovitch’s course “From Paper To Canvas”, the first two weeks of January. Since then I have been practicing an hour a day, four days a week. The first week I practiced 30 min poses with the conté, and the last too weeks I’ve been practicing with the willow.

I’m very happy with my most recent drawing. I took the time to squint to compare the edge types, and I managed to not abandon ship; as I started to fill in the background and lights, the value structure got weak, but I think I managed to fix it.

The part of it that I’m most happy with is the torso. In the head and arms I got confused, unsure what to prioritize, and I started to make more ambigous marks. In the lesson I think Joseph mentions how he goes through the body in rounds: he brings the head up to a certain level, then he continues down to give the rest of the body the same treatment. Then he cycles; bringing up the head, then going down. When I reached the stage where I had to fix the value structure, it felt more natural to me to fix all the big things first, before jumping into the cycle and add the next level of detail to the head. This is what led to the confusion I mentioned above: I wasn’t sure what to prioritize and this led to me making weaker statements.

Do you think I’m following a good process?

Thank you.

PS. I didn’t find an easy way to add multiple images, so here’s a google drive link with the images   https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1G5wnK_HebgCgjmJqnDdrPq3eR2O3LHvN?usp=sharing

5 + hour drawing:

 

[Carlos Perez]

Hey Jesper, I definitely think you’re following a good approach with 3 values studies in 30 mts that’s focused practice.

 

I wouldn’t worry about the ambiguous marks since your overall gesture and structure look accurate.
About joseph’s cycles, I’m convinced those are for a finished render, I see your aim is to get  2 or 3 values studies of the figure and move to the next pose, those are not meant to get that specific.

There’re some edges that could get softer in my opinion and the shadow mapping could get more specific although I’d keep things simple and just focus on the values.

I personally focus on edges when I do like drapery studies where most of the time the structure is simple when I do the figure studies most of the time is just focus on gesture and structure as Steve Huston teaches to simplify it as much as possible.

Keep the Good practice Jesper

Cheers , Carlos Perez a.k.a Makith

 

 

[Jesper Axelsson]

Thank you Carlos!

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