Gestural Studies #64-82

Well, I didn't manage to get through 100 sketches this week, even with the long Columbus Day weekend counted - tonight's post is bragging about getting up to 82.

Going to try to take my time-per-figure down from 90 sec to 60 sec with the last 18, tomorrow hopefully, and see how it changes my approach - I still think i'm trying too much for detail/structure and then end up missing out on entire elements of the figure. Better to be forced to get the entire figure down, if there's no time for any kind of detail at all.

In other news... Skyrim!  Had a fun, busy weekend, too, saw the VGO (Video Game Orchestra) at Boston's Symphony hall, and just saw Looper tonight. Quality entertainment, all of it. I feel "cultured." And not in the yogurt way.

Gestural Studies, #64 to 82

Gestural Studies #36-63

Today's sketches - I'm at 63 out of 100! Would be unbelievable if I actually got to 100, what an accomplishment. The value of the practice, however, is pretty awesome, I'm already feeling much more comfortable with drawing figures as collections of shapes rather than simply making the lines fit together. You can be really, really good at copying the lines of a reference photo, but you'll never be able to draw well if you can't draw solid substance rather than flat area.

Also,  I'm starting to focus more on the lower body, getting comfortable with legs... notice a few figures are missing arms, in fact, because I was NOT drawing from the top down. Yay! Bad habit gone!

Also: Children have big heads (#51, 61). #59 is my favorite. #43 is a pretty awesome pose, looks like she's sitting on a chair and pushing a door open, two things which don't usually go together.

Gestural Studies #22-35 & Naiad

Just studies today. Feel like there's some progress today, from last time... something clicked, and I realized, it's all about being satisfied with the absolute crap you're producing! Because seriously, with 90 seconds, all you can ever do is try to improve your crap. And, in my case, get to the legs before time runs out.

Click image to enlarge. Check out #28, tee hee!

Oh, what the hey, the 12 visitors to my blog have been such a great audience, here. Let me throw in my first ever kind-of reasonable color painting! Not great, not terrible. Photoshop, in 2011, while my first tablet was in the process of dying from Parkinson's of the Cursor.
Warning, green boobies, click the link below the flat-eyeballed sample for the whole thing.

Click here for full painting. Warning: NSFW.

Flashback

No sketches tonight, so here are some flashes of the past to take up pixels. Nothing nude here, just click each image to enlarge it.

It was 1998. This is probably my first "real" portrait, of a girl I knew in the youth orchestra, in full Napoleon Dynamite fashion: It was from her yearbook photo. And yes, it took, like, forever to shade the upper lip. Har! Oh GOD, I was weird.
But it kinda showed me that I was able to draw, and as The Early Success, that is pretty darn significant - so thanks, Becca! =D I'm going to link her to this on FB, in fact. How cool is that, after all these years?!

Becca - 1998

In 1999, in high school, not all drawings were successes. Funny how the catalog model is uglier than the monster when you put them side-by-side. Still finding my way around a pencil, apparently:

Abercrobie & Fitch "girl"

Monster, after a Boris Vallejo sketch

Fast-forward over all the  terrible notepad sketches of Victoria's Secret models to 2003.
First, a portrait of somebody I used to know, drawn from a super low-res, washed-out webcam pic, still not sure how it turned out so acceptably:

My first fantasy drawing... blargh. Used myself as the model. From the looks of things, I had the hands of an obese child.
One who couldn't draw.
Anyway, I believe this was inspired by the Dark Elves from my first MMO ever, "Lineage: The Blood Pledge":

Dark Elf

Technically, my 2nd fantasy drawing. If you recognize who it is, leave a comment! =D

- Sether

Gestural Studies #1-21, and the Bannister

Welp, well on my way to the goal of 100 gestural figure studies by the end of the week, just did 21 of them.
Embarrassing as heck to post these abominations online, but I'll console myself with the fact that there's visible progression as I get into it - first try didn't get past the torso.

I've already identified what my next 100 studies will be: LEGS! Can't frickin draw them. Probably because every time I do figure studies, I do time-limited sketches, and don't make it all the way down... :-P

Click to enlarge, if you dare. These are 90-second drawings, meant to capture form and movement:

Of course, I wouldn't just leave you with some crappy sketches. Here's some older work, one of my best successes from the early "holy crap I have a tablet" days.
Done in photoshop, trying to keep "graphite" texture in the drawing, see the link below the crop:

Click here for the full drawing. Note: NSFW, contains bum-bum.

Painting: From the Window

Click here for the entire painting. Contains nudity.

It's official, because I'm writing it here: My goal for next week is to sketch 100 gestural studies.
This means I'll be going to www.posemaniacs.com (warning: NSFW, maybe? They don't have skin), and giving myself 60 seconds to represent proportions, movement, and form with lines. A hundred times.

But tonight, as you see above, a new painting for y'all!
This was a first for me, in several ways: The first "true-to-color" painting I've ever finished, the first time succeeding at painting from a reference in Photoshop, AND it's a painting that I did over several sittings... I actually went back and finished it. Hooray for completionism!
Not hooray for perfectionism, though... I won't detail everything that's wrong with it, I hate when other artists crap on their own work, but yeah. It's a "learning experience." Hope you can overlook the flaws better than I can. =)

Originally conceived as a charcoal to go into my folio of 18th-Century-style scenes, the idea is that she's in a tavern on the docks, hollering to some sailor from an upstairs window, shutters thrown open to the street.

Painting: Mr. Peaches

Here's a progress series of a painting I almost did last year. Was pretty proud of it, except for the whole "not finishing it" aspect of the artwork. Original sketch was on paper, then scanned and painted in Photoshop on my old Bamboo Fun. Click the link at the bottom to see the rest.

Click for more...