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DAY 92

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DAY 1

Results of my life-drawing session today.

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DAY 91

I’m back to working on this dude. Going to give myself until the end of the week to get him as finished as I can. I’ve got a first pass in on the rendering now, so I’m going to focus in on key areas and try to nail the most important bits, starting with the shoulders and upper torso.

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DAY 90

Just some 5 minute jobs

 

 

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(Top one is 30 minutes, bottom one is 20 minutes)

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DAY 89

Something I haven’t been doing enough of is daily life drawing. So here is a 20 and a 30 minute sketch.

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Nice job Timo. The secret of the Mona Lisa smile has a lot do with the sfumato effect Leonardo used at the corners of the mouth and orbit. The softness of the rendering creates a sense of ambiguity and mystery in the expression.

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Thanks Timo! Sorry for not replying sooner. I agree, I think things maybe could have been shunted leftwards a bit. I know that elbow looks a little unusual, but I think it’s because of a developmental condition both kids were born with.

Carlos – thanks for the content and the list of suggested courses. I am planning to work through the Russian academic course once I get some more materials together. We are really spoilt for choice on this site!

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Folks, I am extending my hiatus for a few more days. My mum is staying here for the week and my brother is coming through for a visit too. Rest assured, I will be back, but it just feels a bit rude to disappear to the studio of an evening while I have guests. Plus, I want to watch the new James Bond movie.

I did head out today and do some plein air painting, but that doesn’t really belong in this thread, which is meant to be figure and anatomy focused. I’m going to start another thread for my outdoor painting efforts and I’ll post a link here when I do.

 

Thank you for your comments Jo and Jan. Jan, I’ll try to answer your questions briefly:

I don’t use a stump much, because I find it quite difficult to control. I usually end up with a smudgy mess when I try to use them. I’m working on it though. I sometimes use a shammy, but same problem. Mostly it’s down to pencil pressure and grade, and adjustment with a kneaded eraser. Hold your pencil near the blunt end to get better sensitivity.

I think the anatomy matter class will be very helpful. For starters, you only see what you know. Understanding the structure of what you’re looking at makes it much easier to make sense of the visual information available. Moreover, I think that structural understanding is going to be essential for bringing design into my drawing, while keeping everything believable.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by LEWIS MACKENZIE.

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DAY 88

I had a wee hiatus from the 100 day challenge, as I was visiting family for the weekend. Got back and did a little today, but not much as I am itching to do some plein air painting and have been rewatching some Richard Schmid videos.

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Nice job Timo. I like the gesture and sense of solidity in the form. The “spotlight” hatching is an interesting graphic device, too.

I feel you may have overstated the lighter values in the face. I can’t see your reference, but it looks to me as though most, if not all of the face should be in shadow, but some of the lighter values there look like they are bare paper, which is a value that appears in the lights. For an object of a given local colour, all of the shadow values should always be darker than all of the values in the lights. The reflected lights around the mouth and chin in particular look too bright to me, and it gives the impression that the jaw is slightly twisted towards the viewer.

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DAYS 86 & 87

Sorry for not posting the last couple of days, but I have been working hard to get this finished. Happy to say the I posted it to the customer this afternoon.

 

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Thanks for the comment, totte. I’ll try to answer your questions one by one:

What is the difference between “block in” and “rendering” in this context?

I’m using “block in” here to mean finding the outline of the figure and the main shadow shapes, without trying to render form.

When you need to make dark areas even darker, do you add graphite to the same areas again? Of the same hardness, or can it differ? Do you use an entire range such as 10B to 10H, or only selected grades?

This is an area of technique that I am still trying to master. In this instance, I blocked in using just an HB pencil, adding tone in the shadow areas to help me see the drawing better, then I erased all that tone when the block in was complete and replaced it with a 6B, very lightly. I find that when I’ve added tone to an area in a harder grade pencil and try to use a softer grade over the top to make it darker, the paper won’t take the softer graphite, so I wanted only 6B graphite in those areas to keep the full value range available in the shadows.  I try to creep up gradually on the shadow values until I’m sure of my drawing, so that I can always erase things if I need to. I use VERY sharp pencils and try to darken areas first by filling in white spots where the graphite has not filled the grain of the paper (quite tedious), and then by applying slightly more pressure. Sometimes I will go into areas with a harder pencil to fill the grain and get a more even tone without going too dark, but I avoid using a softer grade pencil over a harder one.

I’m trying to get by with a 3H, HB, 3B and 6B.

Would you please consider adding a ruler or something for scale in a photograph of this figure drawing? I’m only a beginner, but I can’t quite understand how you manage to get such level of detail on what looks like grain at the level of Arches cold press watercolour paper.

The paper I’m using here is a heavyweight cartridge paper from Daler-Rowney, in A3 size. Actually quite smooth. My photographs always seem to accentuate the grain of the paper, but it’s certainly nothing like watercolour paper. The figure is maybe 10 inches/25 cm high.

 

Hope that helps!

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FAT 84 & 85

Ugly duckling phase, I hope.

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Thank you Kay!

DAY 84

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