I had a pretty good realization when I got frustrated with my drawings. I realized that I tend to see a good deal of improvement, then I start taking on other challenges and slowly start to lose sight of what I know I should be doing every time I go life drawing. Of course, this leads to sloppy, sad drawings that don’t make me happy and don’t encourage me to keep drawing. The problem is, once I start to see so much improvement, I stop reminding myself to compare everything, I stop whispering muscle and bone names under my breath, I go back to just trying to be fast and slop something out quickly. Of course, if I slow it down, study the forms, look more than draw and remind myself to “compare everything” as Henry Yan said, then I get a much more accurate drawing even quicker. Partially because I don’t have to waste so much time wondering why something looks off.

Someday, I think these things will be more instinctive and I won’t need to constantly remind myself of them, but until then, I need to stop trying to jump the gun and just slow it down a bit.

These are in reverse chronological order… for no reason at all. Starting at the top here are some drawings from earlier today when I decided that this girl’s hairdo is maybe my favorite hairstyle to draw ever. I’m also doing something new this time… including some 2 minute and five minute drawings! I usually hate those but I’m getting faster so, check em out.

I’m still trying to get more accurate with my proportion and anatomy, but I’m also doing more work trying to be more accurate with faces and values. Frankly, I need to balance my values like no one’s business.

*PS., Happy Birthday Tom!

I started the 30 days by cranking out a ton of gestures and faces because I felt like I needed to. I did those for awhile but I’ve moved on to serious anatomy studies. I have a feeling I’ll be doing these anatomy studies for a long while! There’s so much to learn and I can see a serious improvement in my speed and accuracy of drawing at the workshops. I’m also using these as a chance to work on my line control.

Every night I go home to this:

I’ve been using the three books on the right to get my anatomy practice. I’ve been drawing out of that Michael Hampton book a lot, but recently I’ve started modifying his drawings. I’ll draw some of the drawings he uses as an example for the muscles but add more anatomy to them. I like his muscle gesture and volume shapes so I’ve been trying to draw all of those as well. I use the other anatomy for artists book and Gray’s anatomy to supplement the information that’s missing from Michael Hampton’s book, or just to get a better idea of what Hampton is talking about.

I plan to go through those Loomis books somewhat the same way…

Some of the studies/practices were drawn from tv shows or photo reference. I’ll admit, I can’t remember where I got the reference from in most cases, so, if it’s your photo and you hate me for referencing it, I’m sorry. But kind of not sorry cause I gotta study! GET OFF MY CASE MAN! I JUST GOTS TA DRAWR!

And here’s some drawings:

These next images are getting into some of my nightly studies… just a few though because I promised myself these wouldn’t be viewed by anyone so I wouldn’t feel any pressure to draw better than I can. Some of the drawings are copies from Michael Hampton’s book, some are from photos and tv ref and some are made up.

Here’s a quick digitally painted self portrait I did getting excited about Halloween… I am no longer excited about Halloween… Ha ha.

The second I post this I’ll be drawing latissimus dorsi like crazy!

My new study routine is pretty simple but intense. I found an old sketchbook, one of those brown Strathmore 11 x 14 sketch paper books that I started doing crappy life drawings in a few years ago. I’ve started a 30 day stretch that I’ve planned to draw studies in this thing for three hours a night. I’m focused on getting better at an accurate construction drawing and I also just want to be better at faces. Portrait style and on my quick figures as well. For the past five days, I’ve drawn a few pages from the book Figure Drawing: Design and Invention, including gesture, structure and faces. I’ve also just drawn faces from various people and photos and pausing the show I’m watching on Netflix to draw someone. Actually, I’ve been pausing Netflix a lot to draw someone… I feel like I would be a horrible tv watching companion.

Since starting this 30 days/3 hours a day thing, I had a figure drawing workshop this morning and I could already feel an improvement in my structure and faces. I’m really excited to see how this goes.

Here’s an assortment of figure drawings and random things, a small sample of all the drawing I’ve been doing. The last couple are from today. You guys might not be able to see an improvement, because most of it was just how quickly I was able to work and how much more solid my quick drawings were.

_{Disclaimer: My scanner is coming up blurry, and my figure studies are too big to scan so I’m just taking photos of those with my phone… sorry about the lack of quality on the images.}

Some recent Figure Drawing in order, oldest to latest. All either 10 or 20 minute poses:

Drawing little monsters and strange looking kids on Lincoln’s lap are fun by the way. Also, I realized it sort of helps serve another purpose. I like practicing with reference but it can be boring. It’s more fun to add a little weirdness, and it also adds a layer of practice. I have to try to fabricate light reacting to objects and surfaces that don’t exist. Dig it. More practice.

Also, some of you might notice the page of Lincoln heads that I drew from James Gurney’s latest book to study different light sources.

I know I still need a lot more work on accuracy and controlling my value relations but I feel like I’ve been having more fun just doodling lately and it’s maybe even helping me to improve.

Also, here are some quick digital doodles. Just some pointless monster designs and a little donut related humor.

This year I’ve refocused my goals. I’ve been putting things off for no good reason, plenty of reasons, but none good. I’ve been relying on the skills I developed as a kid and somewhat on luck. I’m finally at a point where I need to move forward. Take some hard work and apply it in the right direction. I know what I want to be able to do with my skills and, for a while now, I haven’t been working as much as I should to move in that direction. I have been really lucky with my career though. I keep getting amazing jobs and I have been able to learn from these experiences.

This year, I’m devoting myself to getting seriously better. I gave myself a booster in that direction with these fundamental classes. Now they’re over and I’m not sure I can afford the time or money to continue taking classes (maybe I’ll take some workshops if an opportunity comes up) but now I have an arsenal of books, study habits, online tutorials and blogs, and materials to study with. I’m kind of excited to pinpoint my weaknesses and attack them, until they’re dead! That actually might be more productive than classes. I have a tablet with sketchbook, a slew of moleskins, charcoal, newsprint and even my own plaster anatomy cast to draw from (currently on it’s way to me). I’ve got no more excuses, it’s time to get better.

My goal is to be able to start doing independent illustrations by 2014. Three years. Whether it’s conceptual or editorial, I don’t know yet. Mostly, I just want to be able to do more full illustrations by then. I’ve got a lot of studies to do. Once I get my computer replaced/fixed I’m hoping to start doing one full color study from life (or maybe photo ref) per week and one master study per week, obviously along with more drawing in my sketchbooks. Until then I’m just going to catch up on some reading and sketching.

These are all charcoal.

Everything I was struggling with and aching to know is being taught to me. I’m still learning and I still need to keep practicing but I’ve learned some great techniques and methods of practicing. I went into these classes specifically wanting to come out with a better plan for my future practicing. My goals for these classes were to improve my understanding of value (how light really works), improve my ability to measure and accurately draw from life and generally be able to draw more classically. And I wanted to learn to use charcoal! I’ve been completely in awe of Henry Yan since I first saw his book, so hearing that he taught at AAU made it an easy decision for me. I’ve been life drawing about four days a week for the past eleven weeks. It’s been amazing and I still have five weeks left.

So here’s a taste of some of my homework assignments and life drawings form those classes. I wanted to post these so that my next post can blow them out of the water, since I’m really aiming high on the end of the semester.

I’m sorry I don’t have time to fill you in on more and that these are just crappy photos of giant drawings but I can promise two things:
1- I’ll have some neat final drawings to show you coming up.
2- the next time I get a chance to post will probably be sketchbook scans, and not just any old sketchbook scans, but drawings that I’ve been having some fun with.

I am completely in love with charcoal. I blew a whole gust of it from my drawing into my tea yesterday and drank the whole cup anyway. Love it.

First order of business; please post comments. Real comments. I am so very tired of spam. I’m not really sure how to explain this better than showing you guys my comment stats. These are all time, every comment I’ve gotten since my first post on this blog…

Yep, that’s right… sucks. Seriously. Ten comments? One thousand, three hundred and six spam! That’s a really discouraging set of numbers. So thanks people who comment, and to you spammers out there… Shut up! Just stop trying to post to my blog! I don’t read your crap, I don’t click on your links and I don’t let your crappy messages through (at some expense to my time that I would like to reclaim) so no one else is reading your junk or clicking your junk links either, so just stop it.

Secondly; I believe I had promised some level of various materials used in my next post of sketches. I think that’s been accomplished. I’ve been a regular at the art supply locations around town, trying out all sorts of things I’m not really familiar with or comfortable with either. So if some of these seem strange, that’s why.

I’m really focused on three things:

As a result, some of these have aspects of them I like but wonky parts as well. That’s just a result of volume. I’ve really been trying to crank through pages lately in my sketchbooks, so I’m not really agonizing over issues. I’m just trying to find ways to avoid those issues while maintaing that speed in my next attempt. It’s tricky…

These next couple are some doodles I did at work when my mind was wandering… there’s probably a lot more but these were just the easy one’s to find in the crazy amount of Illustrator files I’ve set up up on my work computer.

Until then, here are some doodles I’ve done mostly during meetings at work, although the first two are something I drew to send in the mail to a friend. The horizontal one is the envelope I actually sent, while the vertical one I decided was just practice (but eventually used it randomly anyhow).

And here are a couple sketches I had intended on finishing up when I realized I didn’t know how and I spent too long sketching them anyway. I might go back and finish them later…

That last one was a ton of fun to draw… I actually really should finish it up. Maybe I’ll start my next post with that. We’ll see. Thanks for checking in on my doodling folks!

I’ve been drawing a lot lately and really enjoying it, I just haven’t been keeping track of where those drawings are and all these websites (twitter, facebook, blogs, etc;) get me overwhelmed sometimes so I haven’t been posting them… or even updating my facebook status! Hopefully though, this new box (that’s right, a whole box) of pens I ordered will get into a serious tango with my hands and I’ll post the results for you gentle web folk here before another three month period has passed. Maybe even soon… stay tuned.

I feel like I still need to draw a lot more from life, but I just feel invasive lately when I think about drawing people in public again. I would just draw people I know but I’m still trying to get over that fear that I’ll draw them wrong and offend them when they eventually ask to see what I drew. But, I’ll get over that… or spend the rest of my life drawing in mirrors.

I sat in front of the mirror while watching SNL. I’m not really a fan of staring at myself in the mirror but I feel like it’s good practice when I can’t think of anything more fun to draw.

This is what it would look like if I had a seamonster that liked to chase mermaids.

I put a millipede in one of the cactus I potted… I’m nervous it’ll mutate, multiply, and spawn a sad little cactus man. This is sort of the result of me being determined to get better at drawing that golden barrel cactus, then getting bored with it and drawing bugs and little guys instead.