Sketchbook: Life Drawing and Doodles

Life Drawing Slide

2012 Drawings:

Been a bit quiet on the drawing front these days as there are big plans in place to move away! Just starting a small personal animation project in my spare time (see my 'Experimentals page for this!) and this is an amalgamation of some odd drawings Ive attempted at work this week. Slowly easing myself into it again:

Home Life Drawing

These are a few doodles from a session I did with a friend at my house. I plan on asking him to stand in and pose for me again (if he will) just so I can get in some practice. I have to say these are probably some of my worst attempts at life drawing and they vary so vastly from my 1st Life Drawing class back 6 months ago:

Before:

Brace yourself:

I just really dont know what I did wrong with this session. I used pencils, pens, graphite and crayon but I dont feel there is one good drawing amongst the lot. I took too long on the details (as always) and should have started simple then built up to the details if I had time. I mostly let him count up to 1/ 2mins so personally I think alot of them could have done with looking alot more loose and less stiff and controlled. Saying that though, I do like the hands in the above drawings and the couch-pose above that.

A Doodle a Day! (In work)

Ive been trying to get back into life drawing so heres November's attempts! Baring in mind it was my birthday on the 7th and I wasnt around the work-place on the 6th. Its best to view these in a larger window rather than as they are.

November 1st

November 2nd

November 3rd

November 4th

November 5th

19/10/11

Some doodles I've put together

These are some observational drawings and just cartoon doodles of some of the locals at my day job. Each one was drawn on betting slips and I did plan on displaying them one drawing at a time but I decided against it so as not to be too precious about each drawing. After all they are just doodles from one day at work. My fave is below as I felt I captured the character and pose quite well. With the others if I did a particularly good effort I would have added one or two in their original size but Ive rusted up from not doing enough drawing the last few months so its like being back at square one; and I was doing so well too><

29/05/11

This is one of my favourites at my day-job and he goes by many a nickname but his real name is Jim. Big-nose, Large Leat (his surname), pear nose...it goes on. I love this guy because hes the most easily wound-up guy in the joint but he hates it if I have a day off taunting him so he fills up a large chunk of my day. He quite liked these studies of him being 'nosey' and I arranged these drawings in order of his conversation directing from one person to the other in the opposite direction.

Great guy : ¬)

You can probably tell but these studies of the guys playing a crib game (and the people on the tables behind them) are composited, I didn't draw this as a composition as such I just thought it'd paint the scene to arrange them like this.

This was actually the 1st ever page I drew as a part of my daily-diary doodling. There were alot of bad drawings and scribbles on that page so I cleaned it up to look a bit crisper and picked the best from the bunch.

I was quite impressed by these studies. It was of a group of old gents having their usual Thursday meeting and two studies of a guy choosing music at a jukebox and playing some pool. I especially like the very bottom left hand-study as I think I captured the character's fragility with the line quality and his jacket on the back of his seat. My comps also aren't too bad except for the dodgeyness in the top right drawing, the characters I like in this drawing so its 50/50 for me.

I did this ages ago, that's Jim on the right in an exaggerated side-profile. This was done a year ago.

23/05/11

This is the second page of my recent drawings based on Walt Stanchfield's idea of creating a daily sketch 'diary'. Im still really bad at drawing inanimate objects and need to do some more exercises involving perspectives (which Im notoriously bad at) and just keep at it. My favourite from this page would probably the blue sketch of the behind the bar at work and Im keen on the chunky wooden cabinet I drew in a Wetherspoons pub whilst meeting a friend. That green drawing is a pump in work which I think sucks but Im determined to put up every drawing I do to see my strengths and weaknesses.

These are some studies of a few gents playing pool against each other. I tried to make the older guys look their age with some more rounded lines and the young guy is represented as alot more blocked and straight lined to contrast.
The last box on the page above is of a guy choosing a song on the jukebox.

16/05/11

Some home drawings of rooftops, bedrooms, clothes on a rail etc and copying from books for fun.

Ive been reading Walt StanchfieldIm ready to throw away my pencil and embrace a life of mediocrity! However Ive given it a try and Im not ashamed to show them here due to Stanchfields great closing of his small lecture:

'Dont be critical- the drawings represent 'where you are at' deal with it.'

So I am...trying to! ><

This was copied from a yoga book. I figured the best thing this book could show me is a model trying to balance on a blown up gym ball so it will cover weight distribution, counter weight etc. Also its interesting to flip your eyes between some of the drawings as its kind of like looking at key-frames for an animation:P

Its definitely better than drawing idiotic poser girls from magazines.

More soon, must start positive habit forming!

18/04/11

Finally managed to locate a regular life drawing class close and inexpensive and so here are some of the drawings from lesson 1 plus some observation I did at home:

This was a particularly warm day and I managed to get some lovely poses of the rabbit lazing in the sun, cleaning his paws and chin-fluff and bunching up into a ball as the evening drew in.

sesh. It surprised me that I wasn't as bad as I thought and didn't think I did such a bad job seeing as though I haven't been to a Life drawing class for 3-4 years now.

I did run out of space at the bottom of the page for this one and I edited it in photoshop

This was the 1st 10/20min pose and I had to start again as I had made the slim model too broad-shouldered. I spent too much time on adding shading and features before I had drawn the body as a whole or 'blocked in' the pose. It seems that when faced with more time and the opportunity to add detail my mind frantically races into drawing it all without doing the pre-lim leg-work first. In theory I should block in the figure and pose as if I were doing a quick 3 min pose, then add in texture, light and features with the remaining 17-27 mins I have left. This will be a learning curve as I find I do this in my work quite alot. Its so odd how my mind works!><

This was a better attempt although it is not my best. I like the hands and the arms seem to be my strong-points. I try to do my best with the feet and legs but I didnt seem to have added any weight on the right (furthest away) foot which lets the pose down. Again, I didnt block in the figure as I would have a 3min pose so I will aim to do this in future.

This was a breakthrough in my drawing and am really happy with it...apart from that damned box! I could have taken a little more care drawing this and not cropped it awkwardly in PS! But as for the figure Im rather happy; the arms, legs and even the head/face I was especially happy with. Pauline, the life drawing tutor, commented that I had captured the weight against the furniture behind the model and the weight of the leg and foot on the box and the arm on the hip and leg. I really enjoyed this drawing and I think it shows. Let hope theres more like this one to come, only better still.

January

I wanted to make this page a little less 'edited' in Photoshop and a bit more faithful to my original doodles. I do clean stuff probably far too often and its rare I give myself time to just be loose or to draw from photographs. This past week or so Ive been into poses and body shapes etc so I took alot from magazines, images of men (The Clash mostly) and pictures of me and a few friends here and there.