Life Drawing From Last Night
Below are some of my favourite 1 and 10-minute drawings from life drawing last night.
A Comic - My Beloved Monster
I'm pleased to be working with Oliver Ho again on another comic project. This time it involves a cat as one of the main characters in his story entitled, My Beloved Monster. It's a romance with a twist. Below is some concept art of the main characters: Darnell, Ella, the Cat; and some of the supporting cast, Susan, Hazel, Joan and David.
I'll admit that drawing comics generally doesn't come easy to me. It's a whole different set of skills to master: Panels, story flow, leading the eye from panel to panel, following the script, text bubbles, camera angles, inking, action, conveying emotion, and all those tiny little panels sometimes feels a little restrictive to me. I do think the Schoolism classes I've taken so far have made a huge difference because to me my drawings feel more confident and expressive which makes the layout step a much more enjoyable experience. I can't share anything else with you just yet but perhaps a page or two once it's complete. :)
Schoolism - Gesture Drawing Week 5
Week 5 was about using exaggeration to clearly communicate our ideas. We were to use the model's poses from the supplied video and come up with a story behind each pose and push it a little further to sell the idea. I found some were definitely more challenging to see as an everyday activity. I changed the figure slightly or added some elements in order to get my idea across better.
The second part of homework was to pick an animal and do two hours worth of drawing, focusing on understanding its anatomy because we would be using it for the following week's assignment.
Because I was unsatisfied with my initial drawings from memory, I did more research than was called for, some of which I've posted below. I did feel my drawings improved with the added study but I could still use some more practice. It took me a while to get to a point where I didn't completely hate my drawings of people so I didn't expect instant mastery of drawing animals. I would love nothing more than to rush this learning process and draw like a boss but until I can download this into my brain, Matrix-style, I will have to contend with learning the old-fashioned way: lots of observation and practice!
Lastly, we were to draw for an hour using exaggeration to capture the ideas/feelings we saw in a pose. I found a number of models from photo reference. I used them and pushed their expressions, added costumes, etc., much like the first assignment.
Schoolism - Gesture Drawing Week 4
I've been behind in posting for various reasons, one of which is because I have been working on some art projects. Having said that, I've delayed long enough and should finish up my assignment and move onto Week 5 for the next topic.
Week 4 was about space, or creating spacial depth in our gesture drawings. We were given 1-minute timed poses to draw but this time we were told to strengthen the feeling of space within the drawing. This could be as simple as moving a foot or leg back, an arm forward, etc. Midway through the exercise we were told to switch to our non-dominant hand and follow the same rules. I went a little over the 1-minute mark for almost all the poses but even more so with my right-handed drawings. To be honest, I was lucky if I had enough control to draw a head in that time let alone change up the pose!
We were also asked to do about 2 hours worth of cafe sketching using both the dominant and non-dominant hand. However, lucky me, I managed to catch the flu this time and I still needed more practice drawing cats, so I chose to draw...my cat. I did manage to sneak in a drawing of my hubby but my right-handed drawing looks nothing like him; I unintentionally made him look like a 12-year old. Teehee! :)
Schoolism - Gesture Drawing Week 3
This post is a little delayed because I took some time off during the Toronto Film Festival. The film festival is a lot of fun, particularly the Midnight Madness portion, but can be a little exhausting with a lot of late nights!
Week 3 was all about creating strong readable silhouettes. For the first assignment we went through timed poses of 1 minute each which seemed a luxury after the previous assignment's 30 second poses. That is, until I realized that a lot of the poses would not make strong silhouettes without some modification, and it often took me a few tries to get it right. I admit that I often went over the allotted time which was a little frustrating. Regardless of my failures, the bright side is that I am drawing much more and so many more poses that I feel that I'm learning at a faster rate.
For the second assignment, we created silhouettes from either 10 photos, movies or pieces of art. I chose to do a couple more because I was having so much fun. I really enjoyed learning from these, especially Joe Quesada's Daredevil and Avatar's Korra. It's hard not to be motivated with such interesting and dynamic poses!
The final assignment was more café sketching but this time using silhouettes. Because of my upcoming project involving a cat and because I've been a little under the weather this past week, I chose instead to draw my little honey-bun, Dax. :)
Schoolism - Gesture Drawing Week 2
This week we covered shapes where the goal was distillation or breaking things down to their essential forms. One of the assignments was to first sketch/paint out the basic shape for each pose from the provided video with each pose timed for 30 seconds. I used to think that 1‑minute poses were short but when each pose is such a short duration you find you have no choice but to get down to the bare essentials and quickly. We were to through the video again, quickly sketching out each pose but this time using the shapes we drew as a guide. Exaggeration or pushing the pose was encouraged; it's something I need to improve upon. This was a challenging exercise and really made me see things in a different way.
In the next exercise we had to find basic shapes using either 10 paintings or photos. I decided to use the same paintings and movies I posted from the previous week and, in some cases, I reconsidered some of my main lines of action.
For the last exercise, we were asked to do 2 hours of café sketching. Because I've been asked to work on a comic involving a cat as the main character, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and instead do cat sketching. I have to say that 30 seconds now seems like a luxury when trying to draw a very active pet.
My next post will be a little late because I'm taking some time off for the Toronto International Film Festival. 😁
Schoolism - Gesture Drawing Course - Week 1
On the advice of my previous instructor, I decided to sign up for Gesture Drawing with Alex Woo. For week 1, we were to ask ourselves what the pose was about and how to best represent it as a line. Here are my assignments for week 1 on the 'Line of Action'. I can already see value in it as a way to keep poses from looking too stiff.
Schoolism - Foundation Studies Course - Weeks 4 and 5
I know that I'm a little behind on this post due to some personal and client projects that came up but below are my 2 assignments for week 4 on 'Composition' with Thomas Fluharty.
I took a little longer on my second assignment for week 4 trying to get the lighting, poses and expressions right. For both assignments, we were given photos to use as reference and encouraged to include as many as possible using all the tools we learned from this course to create a pleasing composition. For my first assignment, I used all 4 of the provided images (dog, cat, window and flowers). For my last assignment, I used 4 out of the 5 images because I felt that a park bench wasn't necessary to the story of daredevil dogs and it would end up being too busy for the shot. I was thinking that I may do a coloured version later and possibly make a print of it.
Week 5 was an overview of gesture drawing with a suggestion to continue studies by taking Alex Woo's class on gesture drawing. I wholeheartedly agree and have already switched to his class. It's a great tool to help you see things in a new way and to keep poses from looking stiff. I will be posting more on that soon.