Alright. So I haven’t drawn much for the last month. Yesterday’s drawings were tough since I felt pretty out of practice. Let’s not let that happen again.
Here’s yesterday’s. A much larger piece of brown kraft paper and pastels felt a little bit easier than the tidiness of pencil and white paper.
My first male model:
I think the male figure is harder to draw. Or maybe I just don’t have as much practice with it. I spent the whole time on this page, focused on his chest and arms.
Finally I got bored with it and spent the last ten minutes trying to draw his face. The angle was almost straight on and I felt like his face was much more dimensional and interesting from the side, but I tried it anyway.
I was able to focus more today and not jump from page to page. I did two pages but I am only showing one here… it is the one I spent more time on. Next time I would like to get the emotion back, which maybe I am lacking here because I did not rush through it like usual. Also, the photograph leaves some details out, like the stool she is perched on. Maybe I need to make details of the rest of the composition more prominent.
My drawing session from today… I’m not showing everything I drew. Perhaps once I gain more confidence I will bare all.
The view from behind the model.
This was done during the peak of my frustration today. Screw the proper way to shade and just scribble everywhere. Get the anger out.
Pastels used to be my favorite medium. This is my favorite composition so far.
Just one heel.
Everyone else that attends these sessions has something really interesting going on. The breaks of wandering and seeing someone else’s viewpoint of the same subject is pretty awesome. I’ve decided drawing is like owning a dog…somehow the styles of the work match perfectly with the rest of the person’s appearance.
I’ve been attending lifedrawing recently. I only go once a week, but it’s a start. I decided to be a designer initially because I wanted a more practical way to use my skills as an artist. But somehow during school and through the last few years I lost the passion for putting image onto paper using my hands only. Perhaps this blog should be a place to track my progress as I continue to draw more. Here are a few pages from last week’s session to start things off:
I’ve realized that I don’t have a lot of patience to get detailed and do one drawing for several hours. This page was probably the third attempt. Finally after a lot of frustration I stop worrying about how accurate it is and just went with the light and shadow.
I tried out the color with this one. This particular model had such a stare on her.
I’ve been making some tweaks to the look of this thing. Sort of slowly. I’m working on integrating my Portfolio site into the blog…or rather the blog into the site to make it one thing. I’m one of those designers that sort of thinks she has the ability to understand code, and potentially suffers from the Dunning-Kruger Effect. So please bear with me as I conduct some trials between now and whenever this new site comes to a full realization.
Cheers,
Alice
Since the fall of 2008 my friend Melissa has spent a lot of time gathering stories about this awesome city and has worked with designers to make the stories come to life visually. She put all this work into a book called Our Portland Story. Last night, Our Portland Story had it’s second coming out party at Backspace during First Thursday. A handful of authors read their stories. Unfortunately I missed most of them, but I did have the chance to hear the last two including the story I designed. I also finally met it’s author, Alex Rauch. The curator of Backspace picked 17 pages to display during the month of November, including mine. So if you are sad you missed out…it’s not too late.
You can buy the book in a variety of ways including directly through OurPortlandStory.com and a handful of local stores including Powell’s (should be on shelves by next week).
P.S. If you have a great story to tell about Portland, I hear Melissa is already taking submissions for Volume 2.
I love this blog: 1000 Awesome Things
It shares really simple things that are pretty common experiences. Things to smile about and think, “Yeah that is Awesome.”
Number 447 reads:
Walking into a crowded party and locking eyes with someone you know across the room.
Ding-dong.
The door opens to you on the porch in your just-washed jeans and crispy clean shirt staring into a sweaty sea of strange faces. You walk in and stumble past a pile of shoes and a kissing couple while awkwardly scanning the room for some friendly faces. Stepping a bit deeper into the anonymousbass-thumping scene you move past empty bowls of chips, slippery wet countertops, and loud laughs … wondering for a second if you’re in the right place.
Then it happens.
You make laserbeam eye contact with a close friend smiling across the crowded room.
Suddenly it’s all confirmed.
You belong here.
AWESOME!
I’ve been keeping my eye out for things like this. So glad to finally have found something worthy of the hunt.
Get yours at Bright Thread.
