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.

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.

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:

In the meanwhile, I’ve used the following references to aid me: Artistic Anatomy by Dr. Paul Richer, Figure Drawing – Design and Invention by Michael Hampton and Anatomy for the Artist by Sarah Simblet – all excellent books. Some of the studies are copies from these sources while the rest use my feet or photographs of feet as reference. There’s something about copying something over and over again that commits it to memory – I now know the names of all the bones in the feet!

I have also included some more of my life drawings (5-10 minute poses).