Life drawing at the TCW – Tuesday, March 13

I went life drawing for the first time since last year (also around this time) at the TCW (they hold their open life drawing on Tuesday evenings) and thought I’d post one of my drawings from that session.

I’ve usually never been quite happy with my life drawing abilities, always seeming to get either the proportions or perspective wrong and these are no exception but regardless there’s usually the odd piece which I find interesting enough to hold onto and these are some of them.  I know I haven’t quite done the beautiful model, Rubie Laframboise, justice but hopefully you will enjoy them regardless.

I really should go more often so that I can improve.

Life drawing at the TCW

I’m making an effort to go life drawing again as it’s one of the things I regret not spending enough time doing. I know it’s a good exercise to keep up with as it trains you to solve problems quickly and, in turn, helps to increase the speed with which you draw. I find life drawing is a lot like working out. The more you do it the better the results. And like working out, it’s hard to get past those first few times.

My first session was no less discouraging as my drawing of the pretty lady turned out looking more like something that was dragged from the pit so I’ll spare you the posting of that. Instead, I’ve posted something from my most recent open life drawing session at the Toronto Cartoonists Workshop.

They had a costume for the latter half of the session which I think added an element of fun plus it’s good to practice drawing drapery. I’ve taken one of the poses and started to add colour and play around with it a bit.  I’m not sure where it will go but sometimes it’s just about the journey.

What I’ve been up to

Since it’s been quite some time since my last update, I wanted to write about what I’ve been up to. I have to admit that the long-overdue fair summer weather and a lot of changes at my day job  contributed to lulling me into slacker mode on the drawing front.  I just wanted to get out, enjoy the weather, see friends, shop and enjoy the city!

Then came fall which always means three things for me: the Toronto International Film Festival (yay!), an increase in work at the office (boo!) and a renewed determination to become a better artist. The last usually means becoming a hermit and devoting whatever spare time is left at the end of the day to draw.

An aspiring writer friend (I’m sure she’ll become famous one day) recently asked me if I’d be interested in helping her take a script she is working on into graphic novel form. After reading only a few chapters, I was hooked but where to begin? I was extremely flattered but mostly concerned about all the work involved. Victor and I decided to get some industry knowledge by taking separate classes at the Toronto Cartoonists Workshop where they have veterans of the comic book and animation industry like Ty Templeton, Geordie Miller and Scott Caple to name a few.

I chose two classes focussing on perspective and anatomy respectively as refreshers while Victor is taking Ty’s Comic Bootcamp that covers scripting, layouts and rudimentary figure drawing. The classes are already helping us to see things in a new light. I’m not sure how this project is going to turn out but I’ll do my best and we’ll see what happens. To make up for my absence here are some of my doodles, studio life drawings and character sketches from the last few months: