Scapulae

The scapula is an under-rated bone. It doesn’t have the coolness of a skull, but it does perform the useful function of keeping our arms attached to our bodies. And it’s a surprisingly complex piece of bone; its ins and outs, bumps and hollows are fun to draw.

Somewhere in the middle of this page I had that incredible experience of becoming completely absorbed in copying values and shapes, and then suddenly really seeing what I was drawing jump off the page – in this case, that hollow where the humerus sits. What a feeling – another small step toward addiction!

A Kiss Is Just a Kiss…

This week has been exceptionally busy; I’m working 6 days instead of my usual 4. I’m quite proud of myself for managing to draw for at least a few minutes every day. And I’ve made it to the gym twice so far! A small step toward this months goal of balancing my time better. Most of my drawing time has been on the next set of bones, which I’ll probably post sometime on the weekend. But here’s an older sketch of a Hershey’s kiss that sums up one of the reasons behind all those gym trips – this is the week of leftover Halloween candy. I took all of our leftovers chocolate bars and gummy candies to work, where at least I’ll have help eating it!

Skulls

What a fascinating hunk of bone we have sitting up there at the top of the spine! It’s such a familiar image, but with each sketch I learned something new. I would love to get my hands on a real skull or at least a good quality model; something is definitely lost drawing from photos. Still, this has been a useful exercise, and should help me to understand how to draw faces more convincingly.

As a side note, look how blue the white paper seems! The photo was taken in the early morning shade at the side of my house, and I assume much of the blueness is a reflection of the blue-grey bricks and siding. This might be an interesting way to study reflected light – hanging various coloured backdrops and seeing how the colour changes.

Staff Training Sketches

We had an all-day training session at work today. Most of it was interesting, but there were a few parts that were, um, less than totally compelling. I found myself doodling on the edge of my worksheet while the presenter talked, and came up with these little sketches of some of my colleagues. I was fairly pleased with the two on the left – admittedly it’s harder to get a bad likeness of the back of the head, but I felt I captured them well. The one on the right, on the other hand, doesn’t look much like the person at all. But it’s a major step for me to even try sketching in public, let alone with people I know, so I’m quite proud of myself for trying despite the limited results.

November Goals

My major goal for November is simply “time”. Spending time on art, and managing my time

I tend to obsess about my interest-du-jour and spend a lot of time with it, but often don’t get much else done. So for several months I focused on losing weight. I ate well, I exercised, I calculated and planned, and I lost. But everything else, including art, was neglected.

Now I want to get back to art. So I could just make it my current obsession and spend most of my spare time on it. But it’s November. That means Christmas is coming up, with all the associated planning, shopping, baking, cooking, cleaning, decorating, and so on. Especially since we are hosting an extravaganza with a cast of thousands (well, a couple of dozen) on Christmas Day to introduce the whole newly-blended in-law family to the rest of the extended clan, and I work until Christmas Eve. Which means lots of advance preparation. Which means I will need to plan and budget carefully to make time for art.

And what will I be doing with that time?

Sketching

• PoseManiacs. After only a few days of doing regular 60 second sketches, I am noticing a big improvement in my work. So during November I’m going to fill the rest of the recycled novel I’ve been using. With about 140 pages to go and 2 or 3 sketches per page, that should take about 10 per day. And it will be invaluable in preparing me for:
• Sketching in public. At least 3 times during the month, I will go sketching in public and complete at least 6, 8, and 10 sketches.

Anatomy

• Continue researching anatomy. Finish the arms and hands page, and start on legs.
• Bone drawings. (These are taken from a life drawing assignment in the Sheridan college animation program. I found several examples online: Bones, The Damned Bone Portfolio, Bone Drawings, Bone Drawings, Halo Sketch and Bones)
  • 6 views of the skull
  • 6 views of the scapula
  • 6 views of the pelvis
  • 9 views of the vertebrae (3 each cervical, thoracic, and lumbar)
  • 2 views of the shoulder joint
  • 2 views of the hip joint

Drawing

• At least two drawings per week, in addition to the bones.

Painting

• At least one painting session per week.

Happy Halloween!

In honour of Halloween, I spent a couple of hours this morning in the company of this cheerful guy. I’m quite pleased with how the drawing turned out, although there are a few spots I might go back and touch up now that I see it on the screen. I wish I could get better scans, though; the pencil strokes always seem more pronounced than they are in the original, making it look streaky.

It’s difficult to see some of the subtle changes in value on a white(-ish) object, but I am beginning to feel more confident in my squint-and-simplify ability. As a double check, I used Gimp to desaturate the reference photo (which came from the biology department of the University of Cincinnati), and then to posterize the black and white image.

The

Minute Men

Except most of them are women. (Could you tell?)

60 second drawings from PoseManiacs. It’s interesting how much more relaxing it is to sketch on a destined-for-the-recycling-bin page than on a nice, new, blank sketchbook page!

First Glazes

I’ve finished the first glazes on these two paintings in my Reading series. The values are off – especially in the water, which is too dark in both of them – but that’s fixable. And already there are some very nice things happening in the rocks and foliage, much of which unfortunately doesn’t show up well in the photos.

Edited to add: A glaze of white to fix the values. Once this dries, I can get going on the fun part!

People in Public

I’m feeling quite proud of myself today. I gathered up all my courage and went sketching in the food court at the mall.  The results were not great, but they were at least encouraging enough that I will try again. Actually, the three women are reasonably good likenesses, at least for a first attempt and in just a couple of minutes each. I’m particularly pleased with the one of the woman in the headband. Ignore the gorilla in the lower right corner; the man I started to sketch did have an unusually angled forehead, but nothing like this!

Sunday Study Notes – 10/25/09

Posts I’ve learned from this week:

• This week’s brilliant idea: Linda at Quotidian Curiosities has started using a “junk sketch book”, an old book that she rescued from the reject bin, for her Blind Contour Friday drawings. What a great idea! (I tried to leave a comment on her blog to say so, but Blogger apparently wasn’t playing nicely with WordPress yesterday and kept rejecting it.) One of my biggest problems with sketching is that I still feel that every sketch should be a drawing. I haven’t been able to convince myself that it’s ok to “waste” those blank pages on scribbles, experiments, failures, and messes. So yesterday when I went to work, my first stop was at the library discard bin, where I picked up a new “junk book”! I’ll be breaking it in later today after my last dragon boating session of the season.
• Larry Seiler posted a wonderful gouache painting on black paper with some very helpful WIPs, plus a couple of others here and here. They reminded me one of James Gurney’s posts from last year, Drawing Shadows, Drawing Light which I had bookmarked because I found the idea of drawing light so intriguing. A couple of years ago I drew this leaf from one of my houseplants in white pencil on black paper, and found it a fascinating exercise. I need to try it again; next time I’m at the art supply store, I’m going to pick up some coloured papers so I can experiment.