Drawing Fundamentals - The Adventure Continues

I spent a lot of time at the Minnesota State Fair this week, plus it's just been a busy week overall. The best part of the week was the llama dress up contest at the state fair. I took a number of close up pictures of the contestants and their llamas or alpacas when they were lined up for judging. While this didn't capture the full impact of the costumes, it was more fun to capture the faces of the contestants and their animals. This one's my favorite.

Super Girl and Wonder Woman, both looking strong. I think our world needs more strong female energy in it.

In spite of having limited time, I have been drawing every day. Earlier in the week, it started out okay and I was doing things like this.

There is so much coverage about the fair in the daily paper, so I used some of those pictures to experiment. 

Somewhere, it started to go wrong and I could start to see that flat geometric shapes might not be the one-size fits all, introductory, step towards better drawing that I thought it might be. However, I wasn't sure about the next step.

I've only been doing this a handful of days, so some of it is still figuring out what the shapes are that I am seeing, how much detail is enough or too much and so on, but there seemed to be a bigger problem. Using flat geometric shapes seems to work best for items in silhouette with objects which are relatively flat to begin with. 

Last night, I had a little time and I sat down to think about this and try to look for resources. I found my way back to an Alphonso Dunn video on YouTube. Instead of ovals, he's using cylinders.  Here's a clip from this video. Plus, in this clip, he is midway through showing an example of linking a gesture line to filling in the rough details of the person. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Alphonso!

I may have linked to this same video before, but now it makes sense to me in a different way. Plus, I can see that thinking about simple shapes in this way helps address the 3d-ness or volume of things.  

I was part way through this page, but played around a bit with cylinders. I also have one of those mannequins which can be easily positioned, so I am going to use that to explore the world of using simple shapes to help my drawing in a way which better suggests shape, volume and 3d-ness.

This has been and continues to be an interesting journey. I lack a predisposition towards processing and making sense of shapes. As an adult learner trying to figure it out, it's fun when there's a next step. It's frustrating when I get stuck and don't know enough to identify the problem or a problem when I get stuck. In those times, I know that I'm not making progress, but I don't know how to get past that. 

Sometimes I wish I could snap my fingers and find the magical tailor-made path, which would lead me through this learning process. I'd do the work.  I promise.  Just, lay out the steps for me, which would help me develop skills and also help me to better evaluate my work. At other times, I'm glad that I'm in charge of my own process and I have to find the resources and people who can help me and I decide if what they offer is what I need or want. It sure seems like a middle ground should exists out there, but I haven't figured it out.

Geometric Shapes - Day 2

I am not planning to post each day’s geometric drawing, but I do want to keep track of what I am doing.

I did some more flamingoes.

After that I decided to try doing a geometric drawing from a 3d shape rather than a flat picture. I have several toys that I use to practice drawing from time to time. It was not a surprise that doing a 3D shape is harder. It might have been better to start with the tortoise toy. Even so, I think doing the geometric shapes for now is probably the best thing I can be doing to learn.

A Different State Fair Experience

I took a class on Thursday night about "Drawing the Uncooperative Model" by a really good sketch and overall artist. I walked away with a lot of notes and things to consider. On Friday, I did the follow up class, which was drawing at the Minnesota State Fair with the same artist. Both sessions were over my head. I thought they would be, but the reality of it was way more than I expected.

On the plus side, I came away with a lot of information. Plus, I worked my way towards figuring out how to apply what I can now and save the rest for later. On the not-as-positive side, yesterday, the sketching part at the fair did not go well for me and I was more of less ignored by the instructor. The instructor said he’d drift by and check in with people from time to time. He didn’t. Instead, I sought him out once and asked for help. In those several minutes, he shared a good foundation skill, but after that I was pretty much left to me own devices. I wasn’t expecting intense hand-holding or one-on-one, detailed, instruction, but was really disappointed that he didn’t do what he said he was going to do, especially since it was a small group. After 2.5 hours of a 4 hour class, I went off and did my own thing.

So for the good stuff. From Thursday night's session, I walked away with a good way to work on value shapes and structures. I purchased a sketchbook with  gray toned paper and several Pitt artist pens, the big brush kind, in black, warm grey, cool grey, and white. The Pitt pens are nifty. You can put down one layer of color in one of the greys. After it dries, which is quick, you can put down another layer of color, which is darker. It's a quick way to build value shapes in somewhere between 3 - 5 gradations of values. Plus, the toned paper acts as one of your value ranges. That means you use the white pen to just add those splashes of the lightest light. This also helps me since I have a bad habit of drawing over my lightest lights when I am drawing on white paper. After I work on the following, I think I will practice with simple objects at home where I can influence the lighting and working my way to more difficult ones.

The other idea which clicked and made sense is to try and see objects as a collection of geometric shapes. It’s not a completely new concept to me. I’ve read about it, but it didn’t make as much sense as when I saw a live example of it. There's something about seeing what the artist is seeing and watching what the artist is doing to really help make certain connections. The sketchbook guy, briefly, walked me through seeing a person as a series of geometric objects that are pieced together and how you can build upon that. We were sitting on bleachers and looking at a person from the back. When I looked at people from the back, I could see some of the same shapes in other people, but I couldn't transfer it when people were in a different position. Still, it made sense in that one moment and I could see it. That’s enough for me to slow down and figure it out in my own time and manner.

With the wonder of a Google search, I found this example, which brought additional clarity. Viola! In the reboot of daily drawing, I am going to start looking at objects and drawing their shapes, roughly, using geometric shapes. I started this morning using some of the pictures in the linked example. Here are some of them.

Hopefully, this will me get out of the details and out of the weeds. Right now, I literally cannot see the big picture and cannot filter out the unnecessary. I just can't do it, yet. I keep bumping up against this problem without really recognizing it or knowing what to do about it. Now, I feel like I have some options and, if I practice, I expect to make progress. 

I want to work on the drawing things from pictures or life using geometric shapes for awhile. Next up, I could see starting with the geometric shapes in a lighter medium like pencil or a gray pen and adding truer contour lines and a few details in pen and just building off of that. After awhile, I could see using the toned paper and Pitt pens to try and capture the large shapes, but more from a value perspective. 

State Fair Entries

It was a good year.

It's easier to take a picture of a first place entry versus a second place entry, plus the lighting in the display case for blue ribbon items is better than the other display case.

My scarf was from a pattern called Fox Paws.  Since the designer came and taught the techniques at Yarnover this year, I thought there would be a lot of versions of this pattern.  I only saw two, mine in heavyweight yarn and another one in fingering weight yarn. My other entry used the same techniques, stacked increases and stacked decreases.

Robin's The Name

Butterfly pictures are the game.

The past several years, I have planted a row of flowers for the butterflies and bees back by the alley.  I am filled with joy whenever I am back there and see these creatures enjoying the flowers I grew for them.  There's been a lot of joy the past several weeks.  Not so many pictures until today, but a lot of joy.

The monarchs especially love the huge Mexican sunflower plant, also called Torch.  Occasionally, they will stop by a zinnia.  The bees love them all.  The other butterflies / moths seem to like the zinnias better.

One Of My Favorite Models

I've been dabbling a bit here and there. As part of that, last night, I picked up a pen and drew my tea kettle. It released or unlocked something and I think my hiatus is over.

I started this last night and finished it today.

#345 - Dorian Gray - 6" x 6" - paper

Dorian has always been one of my favorite models, although it is hard to get a decent picture of her. I used the flash too many times when she was a kitten, so she looks down or away when I have a camera.  I'm always very happy to have a good photo of her that I can use to paint.

Given that I feel very, very rusty, I am pleased that this really does look like her.

Paint Strokes

Hello, there. It's been awhile. Since I have a lot of new hummingbird pictures, I painted from one of the new ones.

#344 - 2019 Cabin Hummingbird

I'm back to feeling lost when it comes to painting backgrounds. The background for this one was originally a darker, duller red. I changed it since I didn't like it. 

I've been picking up my paint brush here and there and one frustration has been with paint strokes. To remove the barriers to just paint something, I decided to draw out some simple shapes in a pattern and practice filling them in. It worked well, since it gave me more than one try to fill in a shape.

While doing this, I found myself slowing down and thinking about the edges of the paint brush and how to best use them.  I have busy week, so I might practice with this a bit more.