Parade of Heads - drawing the Asaro head from life

Above is my 1st attempt at drawing the classic Asaro head from life. I've done very little drawing from life and was never very good at it. Proportions came out pretty weird, but I understood why - basically I started with the Loomis circle, and for some bonehead reason I then extended the face out in front of it a little ways. Derp!! I also just failed to really be checking everything against everything else before darkening in my lines. So I decided to do it again the next night (tonight).

Dramatic difference!! I switched from an HB to a B Conte pencil, which I like a lot better, and also pulled the few remaining pages out of the newsprint pad (I was getting the cardboard texture effect in yesterday's drawing) and just clipped them directly onto a drawing board. That in itself seemed to make a big difference. My shading went down so much smoother and I felt like I had much better control. Oh, also wore my glasses for this one. That gives me a really tight level of detail control, almost like a super power! My shoulders hurt a bit less than they did last night - getting stronger I guess. It ain't easy holding your arm out in front of you for over an hour!! Need to get on those shoulder endurance exercises. Oh, another difference - I lowered the easel to mid chest level - yesterday it was mostly up around the level of my face. Which was awkward and doubtless why my shoulders hurt so much. Weirdly the  left trapezoid always hurts more, though I draw right-handed - stabilizing I suppose. 

And this round goes to... The HAND!! DING DING!! (refurbishing some old digital paintings)

Mostly what I've been doing this last week is refurbishing a few older paintings to make them portfolio-worthy. I don't mean a portfolio for getting work - not ready for that yet - just printing them up to put in my own display portfolio so I have physical copies to show people. Here they are - older versions first. 

My manual dexterity has improved dramatically - or the artist's hand as I've heard it called. Notice in the original versions edges were ragged and choppy, but now I was able to get them pretty smooth and crisp without much trouble. 

I also seem to have gotten more subtle with the use of soft edges and textures. Looks like those brutal early exercises in softening edges has paid off.

I was able to clean up the edges (it took a lot of doing for this one!) but I actually still like the earlier version better. Those hard edges were a vital part of what made it work. Now if I could just clean them up but not soften them I might have something decent. Oh, I've been playing around with using gaussian blur to soften some edges - a trick I learned from Camilla Veilmond from her Conceptart sketchbook.

Used a lot of gaussian blur on this one because the background elements were too overpowering. Didn't do much repainting though - it would be a massive job and basically I'd want to start fresh with a whole new composition. 

20 hours in 3 days (recent graphic art projects)

I decided to start keeping track of hours spent working on art, and was quite surprised at how much time I've logged just in the last 3 days. It's because I was working on the computer - for whatever reason it's a lot smoother and easier and less intimidating than putting pencil to paper, and it seems to draw you in like playing a video game. Doing digital art is sort of like playing video games - you can always go back to a previous save if you mess up! Honestly though, I don't think pencil drawing itself is intimidating, it's just the fact that I'm trying to learn all this new stuff - a completely different way to hold the pencil and draw, as well as trying to learn all this technical stuff about heads.

What I've been working on is partly digital painting - finishing and adjusting some of my older pieces so I can print them up for my display portfolio, and it's partly graphic art - creating disc images and cover graphics for some CDs I'm making for my car. Hah - that sounded bizarre - what I mean is I wanted to put put together some CDs to keep in my car, and when I dug out the old ones I had made years ago the covers were all just hand written in ballpoint and looked like crap. Since I've been developing some skills in working with graphic elements I decided to try my hand at making my own covers and labels, with art snatched from the internet and modified heavily.

I started last week with the Season of the Witch CD seen above. Didn't log my time on that one, but it took around 10 to 15 hours on 2 consecutive days - some of the same days I only did like an hour of pencil drawing. So hey, at least I was working the art muscles!! I used a picture of Tura Satana (star of Faster Pussycat Kill Kill) and reduced it to harsh black and white, heavily Thresholding it and with much use of Dissolve. I also lifted the title graphics from a George Romero movie of the same name. The picture is of the insert - it would be folded in half and glued together with the edges colored back using a Sharpie so no weird white slivers show, and you have to open the CD case to read the song listings. I hd to use good photographic paper to get the solid blacks - on regular printer paper they come out grey. I also had to sand the back of the paper to get good adhesion using spray adhesive, and lightly dust the front three times with Krylon Crystal Clear, which seals the paper and gives it a tough coating. I had noticed the good photo paper has a sticky surface feel to it and gets smudged and finger printed super easily. I also got some printable CDs and put the same image on there - but in bright orange. Sealed that too, otherwise it can smudge pretty easily.

Wow, so much detail - but this is my journal where I record how I did things in case I forget later (which happens all the time!)

'Nuther pic, plus the other projects:

See, she's looking at her own dark reflection.

Here I lifted a painting by Rodney Matthews - it must have been originally for an album, as it works perfectly. I need to re-do the title text - don't care for the way it looks and it's off center on the case (it's placed to fit the disc image, didn't realize that wasn't going to work for the cover until I printed it). Really this is just a rough draft - I'll be perfectifying it and printing it up again. I got these flexible plastic cases because as amazing as the slim jewel cases look, they have an annoying tendency to break very easily at the hinges. No way these can break, though they don't look quite as good - I think of them as my utilitarian cases. Plus you can print a title along the spine to see what's in a stack of CDs. I also like the fact that you can print up 2 covers and put one in backwards, to show through on the inside. When I get really ambitious I'll start designing them differently, but for now they're just duplicates.

 Spent the better part of yesterday working this one up. I want to get it printed on a shirt. The dude is Zeno of Citium, founder of the school of Stoicism. The quote is actually the Serenity prayer - used by Alcoholics Anonymous (no - NOT where I learned it!) but I think it perfectly encapsulates the idea of stoicism in one brief phrase. From a time when philosophy was actually practical advice on how to live your life, not just the academic study of  the history of philosophies like it is now.

Must. Develop. Discipline.

Not going to post warmup sheets anymore unless they include something decent. Seeing all those warmups gives me a false sense of having accomplished something - I'm trying to get myself drawing more. The above was from a day when I set my timer app and drew for 2 hours. That's a good start - I want to do that 5 days a week - like a part-time job. Then I need to build up to double that, and then double it again, making it 40 hours a week - more like a full time job.

I think it'll become less intimidating as I get better at drawing the head abstractions and Asaro planes etc - right now I tend to find excuses to do anything else. It'll also be more fun when I start getting back to what I was doing before my big vacation - drawing Fafhrd and the Mouser and assorted other character types. Oh, also I'm going to allow myself to draw with a graphite pencil (or whatever the hell I feel like using) in sketchbooks - or whatever the hell I feel like drawing in! Using that Conte pencil is pretty intimidating in itself! But whatever else I do, Ill keep getting back to the Loomis head construction and the rest of it, and using the Conte at least now and then. I really do like the results when I've got my concentration cap on.

Catching up

Here are the pathetically few drawings and warmup sheets from the last few days. Some days all I did was a warmup, others I managed one drawing, and on some I did halfway decent little drawings on the warmup sheet! Lol - well, at least I'm starting to get used to the Conte pencils and not feel like I'm struggling with a totally unfamiliar tool anymore. The more technical stuff like lay-ins, abstractions and Asaro planes are really hard to draw or even figure out, unless I have a partially drawn head already, in which case it's easy to see where they go (well, not so much on today's Asaro head!) The computer completely randomizes the order of the drawings, and I'm not going to sort them out - so I've taken to (usually) writing the date on them. Should help keep them sorted a bit anyway.

Edit - these 2 requested to be seen bigger. Divas..

Head Phase 1 Lay-ins quiz results

My Lay-ins quiz has been graded and I passed on all of them. Watts doesn't give letter grades, you either pass or you don't, but even though I passed the instructor told me my circles and ellipses were a bit off, as well as jaw shape, and that I should strive to more closely copy the way Jeff draws them - there are subtleties of shape and proportion that must be learned from close copying and repetition.

In fact, so I can remember exactly what was said, I'm going to copy/paste the responses here:

1 Good job! Try to keep the circle as even as possible and watch the shape of the jaw.

2 Good job! Watch the shape of the circle and the ellipse that represents the side plane of the head. Make sure that they are as even as possible. These shapes will affect the overall shape of the head and need to be correct from the very beginning. Try to copy Jeff’s examples as closely as possible.

3 Not bad but try to keep the lines as smooth and even as possible. Try to make the circle even and watch the shape of the jaw.

4 Not bad but try to copy Jeff’s example as closely as possible. There are specific measurements and proportions that need to be learned by copying his drawings. Watch the shape of the jaw and make sure the side planes of the head are the correct size and shape.

5 Good job! Watch the shape of the circle and the ellipse that represents the side plane of the head. Make sure that they are as even as possible. These shapes will affect the overall shape of the head and need to be correct from the very beginning. Try to copy Jeff’s examples as closely as possible.

Added the pictures to remind myself which comment was for which drawing. I've printed up the images from the workbook (Jeff's drawings) and will be tracing them in a bit, then drawing freehand to try to get closer.

Followup - I see that the responses saying "Not bad" are from my earliest drawings and "Good job!" from the later ones - I was really clumsy at first and my lines got better as I went.

Just dug up my old folder full of templates and found the circles, used it to draw a few perfect circles on a newsprint sheet and proceeded to fill the rest with my own freehand attempts. Mine started really bad (not warmed up yet for one thing) but I learned a few things from this:

1. It seems I do slightly better counterclockwise than clockwise. Opposite of Jeff. Not sure which way I went though on the ones where I slid my hand (see #3below).

2. When I correct mistakes in the circle I tend to overcompensate - go a little too far in the other direction.

3. Remember to lay my last 2 fingers completely flat against the drawing surface and slide my entire hand smoothly over it - this results in much better circles (well, they're still not really circles, but much smoother now and getting closer).

I'm not sure I'll ever attain Jeff's level of accuracy and precision, but I know the hard striving is important. It's equally important to think your way through problems - much better to come up with a plan of attack rather than just keep butting your head against the same wall endlessly. And if your plan isn't working, modify it. Mid-course corrections are vitally important.

Do It Like a Spaniard!!

Spent the afternoon watching a bunch of the videos on Watts again today - peeking ahead at what's to come a couple of phases down the road. And suddenly I got really excited, as soon as I stumbled across the videos for quicksketches and figure invention. These are a few screengrabs from the videos - and the ones I like the most are always the quickest - 15 and 30 second heads and 2 minute figures. The longer they get the less awesome they become - though of course you need massive skillz like Jeff has to pull this off so fast (or at all!)

What they immediately reminded me of are the drawings of a few of my favorite comic book artists - all Spaniards who used to draw for Warren publishing's big black-and-white horror comics in the 70's- guys like Luis Bermejo (a chameleon artist who could draw anything in any style, but The Rook from Eerie magazine was my favorite), Jose Ortiz, and Jose Gonzales (the main Vampirella artist). It's not easy to find any of their excellent comic work online - I've tried. Here is a sampling:

Jose Ortiz

Luis Bermejo

I absolutely LOVED those comics in my late high school years - I used to walk up to Shopland every month when the new issues came in and plunk down my thriftily-saved allowance. My favorite thing about them was the way they were drawn - so different from the American superhero comics. There was this quickly-stated elegance and a sort of controlled sketchiness, coupled with amazing design sense and knowledge, and they used a very different shape language than the superhero guys - more straight lines and open, airy shapes as opposed to the carefully closed-off, rounded forms of most of the superhero artists. And those Europeans - rather than just always use hatching or feathering for shading, they used decorative calligraphic marks that lent the artwork even more elegance. God how I wanted to be able to draw like that!! I tried and tried, but my skills just weren't up to the task. 

Tonight I tried again, all fired up on excitement that in the coming years I will be developing the ability to draw very much like those Spaniards! I scrawled off these poor attempts:

Actually they came out better than I thought they would - but I can see a lot of work lies ahead. Gotta get to work memorizing those Asaro planes and Reilly abstractions! That stuff (and completely memorizing it) is the basis for this kind of art. 

Most art schools don't teach this kind of drawing - what an amazing stroke of luck that I found one that does, and that also has an online course!! (.. and that I can AFFORD!)