Summer Reruns: Figure Drawing

Summer Reruns: Figure drawing

Summer Reruns: Figure Drawing

Hhhm. A little long on the forward ankle and that back leg's lower half needs to be pushed to the left. Other than that, I like the curves.

Summer Reruns: Figure Drawing

 A looser quicker pose.

Summer Reruns: Figure Drawing

This was an interesting model. Her name was Moonbeam or something very hippy-ish. She had whiskers coming out of her chin. And she was very overweight. But every student had a drawing of her in their final portfolio at the end of the semester. It is that volume and curves that made her fun to draw.

Summer Reruns: Figure Drawing

More old portraits.

Summer Reruns: Figure Drawing

More old figure drawings found while cleaning.

Summer Reruns: Figure Drawing

Another old figure drawing found while cleaning. Wow! Look at that hair! If that doesn't date this drawing, nothing will. But another breakthrough as the drawing is halfway decent coupled with the shadow and highlights that really make this portrait shine. Probably done with conté or charcoal and several generations old (I'll have to find the original and scan it when the large format scanner is up and running).

Summer Reruns: Figure Drawing

Summer time is nearly here! Which means Summer Reruns! So, between all the new art, I'll slip in some oldies but goodies with the art. While cleaning, I found this old figure drawing portrait. Probably almost 20 years old at this point. Much moodier than my usual stuff but you can get those effects with charcoal. And then, since it was done larger, I probably xeroxed it down in size and then scanned this. So this is a few generations from the original. But it was a bit of a breakthrough at the time with my art since I wasn't consistently getting anything this good with each drawing.

Figure Drawing with Frank Cho

BIG WOW! coverage continues!!!

Right after the Joe Jusko demo was the Figure Drawing with Frank Cho session. I did this last year and it was a blast. Essentially it is live figure drawing by Cho but the audience is invited to join in. Like last year, our model was the voluptuous Ivy, the Baketress (is that a word?) from SoCal.

We did two poses at about 30 minutes each and then Frank critiqued several of the audience member's drawings and added corrections.

For those not familiar with Frank's panels, leave the kids at home. As much as he draws cheesecake, he's not shy about talking about body parts either.

Frank's drawing was projected onto a larger screen. The lighting on the model was low and challenging but we made do.

Frank makes it look easy. The secret to drawing well? Just Draw! Draw! Draw!

Ivy's elaborate Dejah Thoris (John Carter of Mars) costume. My own personal preference, I much rather draw curvaceous models like Ivy than skinny ones. Curves are MUCH more fun to draw.

Later, Frank would critique audience member's drawings and correct them.

More corrections.

A break between poses.

So, how did I do? Below are my four drawings. Four and not two because I think I just draw too fast, something trained into me. I had this problem in my figure drawing marathon a few weeks back. I need to slow down and look more carefully.

I do prefer the close ups.

Last year, I had my work critiqued and, while the drawings were not bad, a lot of the form got lost in all my rendering with my pencils. But since December, I've been using a mechanical pencil instead of the traditional array of HB, 2B, 4B, 8B, etc. While the mechanical pencil doesn't give me the value range for a great pencil study, I noticed it is great for my pre-inking drawings. But these drawings still seem very loose.

Figure Drawing

More figure drawing from the marathon. The model, Randall, had an interestingly shaped head and some great poses.

The Perfect Day

Wow! Two weeks since my last post. Is that a record? Am I slacking off? I'm still making art, that is for sure, but I just didn't have anything ready to scan. But, hopefully, I'm back on track.

May 5th. The Perfect Day, for me. Or close to it. This past Saturday was shaping up to be a great day with the weather and a convergence of things to do. Really, TOO MANY things to do as I had to decide what I could do and what I could not. Free Comic Book Day! Creature Features Convention! The Avengers Movie! Figure Drawing Marathon! ¡Cinco de Mayo! Comic Crawl! It's like everyone chose that one day to hold their event.

Traditionally, I usually celebrate Free Comic Book Day by getting together with my fellow comic brethren as we perform our annual Comic Crawl around the Bay Area. It is like a Pub Crawl only with less booze. We would drive around the Bay and hit up about 5 or 6 shops to gather up some free funny books and drop some dime in their register. We'd usually start at James Sime's ISOTOPE COMICS in San Francisco and work our way down to the South Bay, ending with dinner and a comic book movie, which always seems to happen during this week (lucky us!). Last year's turn out wielded only two of us but we swung by three stores and caught the Thor movie. This year, I opted to drop my role as organizer in favor of a figure drawing marathon at my school. I've been much more in the mode of creating art rather than reading comics of late.

Running a little late, I did catch 5.5 of the 6.5 hours of the marathon. Lisa was the first of two models for the day. I really miss live figure drawing so this was a treat for me. I wasn't up for any long poses but we got in many 2 to 5 to 10 minute ones.

There were a few familiar friends at the marathon with Tracy and Darren and we discussed things like exhibiting at APE in the fall during the breaks. Darren and I also conspired to sneak out 30 minutes early to swing by Joe Field's FLYING COLORS COMICS to partake in a little of the Free Comic Book Day festivities. Joe's from my home town, only ten years older, and he is the creator of FCBD. I'd swung by in previous years and use to be a regular customer but the afternoon lines was very long. Fortunately, the line was also moving and not as long as the one earlier in the day.

In retrospect, I think the Mouse Guard hard cover for free was the book to get but I messed up getting it. I concentrated of picking out three children's books for my students during my summer cartooning class. Adventure Time, Yo Gabba Gabba, Tinker belle, along with a New 52 book were what I grabbed. I was also in a Simpsons comic mode so I bought one of those along with Gary Gianni's MONSTER MEN book, which I had somehow missed. I try to make a point of spending money in each store on FCBD rather than grabbing free ones and leaving.

We were in a hurry with FCBD though as a number of us had planned on attending THE AVENGERS movie. In all, 15 of us were there for the movie as we also took up an entire row. If you haven't seen the movie, it is all that one would want with a comic book movie: fun, humor, action, no slow sagging moments. It was a blast!!

After the movie, we had to fulfill our Cinco de Mayo itch and dropped in on a taqueria. And then afterwards, several of us ended up talking until midnight standing outside the theater in the nice weather. Talking about art, we certainly get carried away.

In all, it was a perfect day for me: Friends! Art! Comics! Movies! I'm hoping for a few more days like this during the summer.

Above art: Model Lisa poses for the first half of the marathon. Coming up next time: Randall models.