Part of working day and night on a portfolio involves pushing yourself into uncharted territory. This allows you to become a better and more well rounded artist. I’m currently going to life drawing at least five days a week. I scoured the city for all the classes it has to offer (I actually have to make a phone call after this post because I think I tracked down another class). When I first started going to these classes, I was shy and intimidated. I was also blown away by what a few people were producing. But now it doesn’t impress me at all. Why? Because it has been about 4 months and they are still drawing the same way with the same paper and mediums. They don’t experiment, so of course what they’re doing looks good. They’ve basically mastered it, and have no desire to move on. Who knows how long they were doing the same thing before I showed up.

It’s just plain boring to me to stick with the same medium for so long. Those people aren’t going to grow as artists until they try new things and really test themselves. They’ll just keep plateauing until they eventually think there’s nothing left for them, or they don’t need to go to life drawing. I use a different medium on a different kind of paper almost everytime I go now, and I’m absolutely loving the crap I’m churning out. Why? Because every once in a while I’ll produce something I really like, and I add it to the portfolio. In the end I’ll have a highly diverse portfolio (I hope).

Here’s a couple drawings from August I did using charcoal and Letraset markers (On sale for $1 each!):

A weird combination, but I liked the result (for the most part). Up until about a month ago, Color was one territory I had yet to explore when it came to life drawing. I dove head first into pastels, conte, chalk, colored pencils, and markers. I’m thinking of trying water color soon.

I’ll be dedicating a few of my classes every week exclusively to color, so hopefully over the next few months, I’ll be able to come up with something good enough to post. Here’s one I did with India Ink and Pastel on Canson Mi-Tientes paper:

Some gestures from a couple months ago.

Here’s some life drawing from earlier today. I finally feel like I’m getting somewhere with this stuff. I found myself having a lot of fun drawing today. The first two are five minute poses, followed by three one-minute poses.

As I mentioned last month I’ve been studying Bridgman’s Complete Guide to Drawing From Life. This was on the advice of my Intro to Anatomy instructor from AAU. I love Bridgman’s drawing style, and this book was so cheap (Only $12!). It’s also gigantic, representing the kind of challenge I was looking for. As the cover says the book includes over a thousand illustrations, consisting of Bridgman’s entire catalogue of anatomy and figure drawing teachings. I figured there was no better way to learn to draw than to study this tome cover to cover. Over the past few months I’ve reproduced every single drawing in this book. But these are not just straight duplications, they are studies. My main goal in the end wasn’t to gain an in depth understanding of anatomy. Rather it was to improve my line quality and flow while drawing. It was basically a great playground for practicing, and trying to loosen up. I was also interested in improving my sense of the proportions of things when drawing. And if I absorbed a little anatomy along the way, that was a bonus.

In the beginning, I was very tight, and rigid. You can see I was fighting the pages, and really searching. Just basically trying to draw too hard. As I realised what a mountainous task this was, I knew I had to spend more time at the drawing board every day if I really wanted to loosen up. So for the past three or four weeks (In which I’ve completed most of this book) I’ve spent no less than an hour a day at the drawing board. Most of those days consisted of 3 or more hours, and some consisted of over 6. When I didn’t get the results I liked, I simply tried harder. And I repeated this until I was remotely satisfied. Juggling the hours between life and work was a task on it’s own, but I managed to get at least an hour every day, which was essential.

When I look at other artist’s blogs, all I seem to see is there best work. I can’t really blame them, who wants anyone to see their crappy drawings? But this blog isn’t just for me to share my humble artwork and opinions on the animation industry with whoever should choose to read this. It’s also a way for me to accelerate my rate of improvement. I can post what I consider my best work today, and think of it as shit tomorrow. This way I KNOW I’m improving, and I can chart my progress. It will also be a great thing to look back on years from now, when I’m as good as I hope I am.

Anyway, presented here are a mere 13 pages from various stages of study in chronological order. The last page was completed yesterday. I can definitely see that I have loosened up a lot. About half way through I bought a gigantic sketchbook and an oil based pencil in an attempt to loosen up and draw with my entire arm as opposed to just using my wrist. These are all learning drawings, and I’m not ashamed to show them. Of course if any of my peers have any advice for improvement, I’d love to hear what you have to say in the comments section.

I think this book is the best $12 I have ever spent on art education. I finally feel like I’m drawing now. I may not be drawing very well, but I have less hesitation when I see the blank page, and I have more confidence in my abilities. I recommend this ridiculous exercise to anyone that wants to improve their drawing skills. Click any of the images in this post to enlarge them to high resolution scans. Sorry for the poor quality, my sketchbook was too big to scan.

I’ll now move on Vilppu, and his DVD series.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the last chapters of the book were devoted to drapery. What a fantastic way to put my newly loosened up arm to the test. While these drawings are very rough, and sketchy, I could not have done then two months ago as well I as I did them yesterday. THAT was the improvement I was looking for.

So here’s the final critique from my instructor. I got an A- on this, which I’m happy with.

So I’m not going to talk so much about the drawing as to address design concepts as we have not talked at all about them. In this I think that it is pretty good in that you have some things that tie it together. The figures are tied together with lines that are somewhat circular you may or may not have planned this but it is a fact. The eye will always be drawn to faces and the faces are close to one another so it puts the focal point in that area. One face is hidden so the focal point becomes obvious in the other. face. It is human nature that your eye will go there.

I’m pretty happy with my progress in this class. I still have one of two more critiques to post, as I just post them in the order the instructor marks them

I finally got some feedback on my self portrait. I was quite curious as to how my instructor was going critique this one because up until this point he had reference photos to fall back on. He could directly specify certain features that were off, or just drawn completely wrong because he knew exactly what we were duplicating. With this one, we drew them live, and therefore he didn’t have any reference. On top of this, unless we’ve uploaded a student profile picture, and he’s taken the time to check it out (highly doubtful), he has no real idea what I look like beyond my own representation here. So needless to say, I was pretty curious how he was going to tackle this one from a marking standpoint. I should have guess though, seeing as this is an anatomy class, and he’s an expert in anatomy, that he would focus solely on that. He can tell when something is off, or needs more definition, simply through his understanding of the forms. And this is what he did, commented on what looked of, and doesn’t make sense anatomically. This has got to be one of my favorite instructor critiques for this reason. It has taught me that we don’t need to rely on the reference if we have an in depth understanding of the forms. That is where I aspire to be someday.

The face is very good here Dan. It has a bit of a Deco look to it. The hair needs work if only to fine tune the skull a bit. The neck needs some work as well. The face is the strong part. I would look at the upper lip to be darker if the light is coming from from above. Look for specifics of the forms of the features. For this I would recommend further reading into Stephen Pecks anatomy book that gives such a great education about the forms of each. The ear on yours is very good which is rare. Get the Peck book. You deserve the information as you have real ability here and should push it. X is the wide point of the head and the line from the back of the jaw is the wide part in general.The values are quite good. The lips are too pale and the upper is most likely deeper . You can make the lashes a soft tone I would look for a few highlights as they will give you an indication as to the tone of the flesh around it. The red and full part of the lips do not come all the way to the corners of the mouth. I would look for the area immediately above the eyebrows to be thicker. There is an area where a sweat band is worn that is thiner. There is a sort of bump at Z which is the frontal eminence

Grade: A-

My final critiques are upcoming, and I think these are the ones I need the most. I clearly had trouble with the face and skull. I will have to practice lots in the summer. I have Vilppu DVDs, and I’ve also purchased a 3B Skull off of Ebay. I would suggest you do the same if you’re looking to improve. Here’s what my instructor had to say about the ugly face:

You have shrunken the skull as you have been focused on the face. The face will not look right as the skull does not back it up. Look at the areas HL. These are the highlights. In some areas you have made these the whole area. As around the nose and cheek. Look at the highlight and then look around it to see the value that is around the HL. Look at the side of the jaw at I. This area is the square form of the massetter. muscle. It is deeper in value than you have done. The shape is right but the value is off. No amount of fixing the form will change the fact that the value is off. You need to get the values better to have the form right. It is as if the form is turned in the wrong direction.

This week was the final week for Anatomy class. It was a chance for us to show off what we have learned this semester. I think I’ve learned a lot, but there’s so much room for improvement. There were no exercises this week, just one assignment, and a tough one at that. We had to take two different full figure poses and compose them into one drawing.

I chose to work on toned paper, as the module examples used it, and I still had some left over from previous drawing classes. I was pretty excited to use toned paper again, because I really liked the result I got the first time I used it.

There’s a few errors in anatomy, but for the most part I would say it’s pretty accurate. I don’t think I could have done this three months ago, which is a testament to what I learned in the last few months. If I had to guess I would say I spent about 3-4 hours on this. I did it over the course of the day, from early morning to about four o’clock in the afternoon, as I can’t sit still for too long. I could easily spend another 2 or 3 hours on this finishing it up, but I decided to stop here.

This was done on Canson Mi-Teintes Dark Grey #345 paper with black and white charcoal. It’s about 18×24. What an amazing class! I can’t wait to learn more about anatomy and improve on my drawings.

Here’s today’s effort. This is the first assignment from this module, and I’ve already had three cracks at it. It is such a hard portrait to draw. This is way better than the first two, because I took the time I needed to block it in. I have no idea how long this took me, somewhere around 2 hours is a good guess. It’s pretty off model as you can see.

Portraits are something I’m going to have to put some real work into after school. Right now I just get really intimidated by them. I’ve got high hopes for the self-portrait, which is next.

This week we’re doing the head and neck. Portraits have always killed me. I can’t even block them out correctly. Clearly I need practice in this area. I was planing on doing a lot of self portraits at some point after school ends, but it looks like my first one will be for this week’s homework assignment. I’ll have it up here by Monday. Hopefully I’ll get better at figuring out the anatomy of the head and neck by then.

I shuddered when I finished this assignment tonight (left). After failing miserably three times at the first assignment, I moved onto this one in hopes that I could at least get something done today. And while I’m glad I did just that, I look forward to forgetting all about this one.

But I promised myself I would post everything I produce, no matter how bad it is. How else am I going to prove to myself that I’m getting better?

Here’s the final ecorche assignment. I’m glad we did this on a weekly basis, and not all at once. I really feel like I learned a lot this way.

Ever since I asked my instructor for more critique, I’ve not only been receiving just that, I’ve also been getting graded faster. It just goes to show you have to speak up in classes. If the instructor knows you want it more than the other students, he will devote more attention to you. You gotta be hungry.

Here’s some great instructor critique, with better results than I expected:
(For some reason Blogger is putting a GIANT space at the beginning of this part of the post…)

	See how all the complexity that you see in the ecorche of the flexors and extensors simplify into a cone shape and above that it is rectangular and below it as well. The palm is a pentagon shape and the deltoid is a 3 sided form with small downturn at the end. See at the arrows how they wedge together to give the characteristic look of the arm . If there is a trick to the arm , then this is it. Grade: A-
	See how the rhythmic dotted lines tie the forms together lyrically. It makes the forms beautiful as in art , weather it is forms or colors or tones or words or sounds, it is not the individual thing but the RHYTHMIC relationship between the things that matter so much. Grade: A-
	Look especially at the thumb here , It is really two shapes . There is the form of the knuckle on top and then the nail and the fat pad combine into one form that tilts up. there is a line around it that separates the form facing up from the form facing down. Grade: A
	At A you can see how the fingers curve back in toward the middle finger. They would eventually meet if you extend the lines. Most miss this and it is very important for the sense of elegance to the hand. Also ,everything goes toward the middle finger. It is the longest on each knuckle and the fingers curve toward it. Notice as well that the ends of the finger tips are shaved toward the middle finger. Grade: A
	The palm is a pentagon and then there is a triangle is the base for the thumb. Look for the lower arm to be a rectangular cross section . R is the ramp form that comes off of it and sits on the top of the back of the palm making it a little swelled there. Look for the pattern of the ovoid muscle on the side of the palm. It has a top plane that starts low and rolls over the top and then goes down again. The first row of knuckles is a soft diamond form with a chord running over it. The second is a raised square as is the third but much softer. There are 2 planes on the side plane The bottom of the fingers are rounded, flat and then tapered with a bump. The second digit tends to taper more than the others. Grade: A
	I would look for the pattern of the sole to continue back to the heel. I think of it like it is a little horizontal balcony on the side there that never completely goes away. The arch at A sits on top of the sole. Look at the gulleys that run behind the ankle bones and then sweep forward under the foot. See the little plane at the top at B. If you tie your shoes to tight it will hurt at the plane change at C Grade: A
	The outside ankle bones are diamond shape on the outside with a chord coming off the back of it. It is in the middle of the side profile. The inside ankle bone is flattish and has 3 planes on the bottom and it takes the front half of the inside profile of the ankle Grade: A
	Look at the bottom of the foot. At A you have the arch which is that part which will come off the ground and matches the ball shape at the top . S is the sole of the foot and it makes the foot print and it matches the platform flat shape on top. Look at the big toe to try to see that end form. Grade: A
	The one thing that I would have liked to have seen more clearly was the ball of the foot on top of the sole. It has a ridge on it that runs to the big toe. Look for the knuckles of the big toe to be squares that are raised. The big toe is very similar to the thumb and it tilts up at the end in the same way. The toes goes down. Look at the big forms to make the large value areas. In the toes I would have looked at the changes in value that describe their tilt across the toes Despite the shapes and wrinkles , knuckles often describe them selves as just deeper tones as the blood in the skin there makes it deeper and more red. Grade: A-

These critiques are great for me, and it’s important for me to post them up here, because once the semester is over, they’re gone for good. And the purpose of this blog is for me to share information, and look back on my progress. You know, to actually make sure I’m getting somewhere…

The first two sketchbook pages of my Irv Spence studies. Thanks to John K for getting me into this, I’m learning a lot.