Life Drawing From Last Night
Below are some of my favourite 1 and 10-minute drawings from life drawing last night.
Life Drawing - October 2014 and March 30 2015
It's been around 6 months since I had time to get out to do any life drawing. Home projects and a comic deadline kept me quite busy but now that my projects are all wrapped up, I thought it was time that I got back to it.
As expected, I felt quite rusty after such a long break. During life drawing with timed intervals, I feel like I'm back at school writing a test with a buzzer threatening to go off. I've attached a couple of drawings from the Halloween session at Kagan's (10 and 15 minute sketches) and two pages from this past Monday's session (1 minute and 10 minutes). I definitely need more practice and practice makes perfect, right? Haha.
Life Drawing March 31 2014
I went life drawing last night and found myself a little frustrated because no matter what I did, I just couldn't seem to get in the zone. I tried going through some techniques that usually help me get into the right frame of mind like gestures and breaking things into blocks (deconstructing the anatomy into smaller and more digestible shapes) but it wasn't working.
For a better part of the evening, I was distracted by my frustration. I eventually realized what was happening and calmed myself and focused on doing the actual drawing rather than how they would turn out. In the end, I managed to draw a few that I was happy with.
Being a creative person doesn't necessarily mean you will have a successful drawing each time but try not to let the failures distract you from getting to your successes.
Life Drawing
Below are some life drawings from a few sessions at Kagan McLeod's studio who is a pretty well-known illustrator .
While drawing, I almost always feel like my proportions are wrong but when I've had a chance to step back I'm often surprised that the sketches turn out better than expected. I still have to work on getting in those 10,000 hours.
A collection of life drawing
After a long stint on projects it's nice to get back to life drawing where I don't have to plan things out and can just enjoy the act of drawing. The short poses really force me to get down to the bare essentials (no pun intended ). Below is a collection of both recent and past drawings. Thanks for looking. :)
Spectrum Fantastic Live event in Kansas City, MO
I went to Kansas City this past weekend to attend the Spectrum Fantastic Art Live 3-day conference event to listen to some of my art idols share their experiences about their work, their life and the industry, and to get inspired. I was indeed inspired... and overwhelmed by the amazing collection of talent in the hall. It was a real treat to meet in person some of the artists whose art books grace our library. And, they were all so friendly and willing to share their process! I was especially fortunate to meet and chat with Michael Whelan, James Gurney, Brom and Brian Despain.
Since this would be a boring post without any pictures, I've included some photos below of Kansas City architecture I found interesting, a drawing I did at the life drawing session put on by Spectrum, a picture of Michael Whelan who was kind enough to pose for us, James Gurney's work in-progress of an ogre (he jokingly called it a self-portrait), along with some art treasures we brought home with us.
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. :o To make up for my absence here are some of my doodles, studio life drawings and character sketches from the last few months:
