hawk-9.bsky.social

More copying, but this came easier than expected. Gotta work on keeping each head proportional to the body, but it was fun drawing this!

The one on the left was an attempt to copy directly from a book, and the one on the right was a second try to do the same pose as fast as I could, and I'm so much happier with the second one! Drawing fast seems to work, huh? 😜

Made this one on my own last year, and felt really proud of it!

Drawing a head from the side taught me a lot at the time. And I'm sure I've forgotten it all. Still, happy to see this kind of progress. Makes me want to go back and refresh my memory of this bit.

Approaching the ball and plane method with a more geometric, mathematical approach, and doing my best to 'copy' Loomis's cartoon characters with what I've learned. A few of these I'm really proud of!

Another charcoal that I ended up really liking. Drew a memory of visiting family, and waking up in the middle of the night to see my wife sleeping soundly by a the window. Strange light from outside kept me awake.

Trying to attach the head to the body was a leap ahead, learning-wise, but I grasped a couple things about it all pretty quickly! I still struggle with drawing the 'side of the head' circle to get a sense of the skull shape, but *shrugs*.

Just trying to imagine a face, and apply Loomis's ball and plane method was haaard. It still continues to be tough, but parts of the face here have some dimension to them, so I was happy with that.

Another instance of 'copying' Loomis's faces, vs. attempting to create my own with mixed results. Some of these I'm proud of, looking back. Apparently tried to apply the method to a cat face and. . .lol I did like how my spheres started to look at this point, though!

Spheres, at first, were really tough. Just kinda followed the directions out of Loomis's 'Fun With a Pencil' and had to trust. Ended up really liking drawing spheres once I got the hang of it. But I still feel like I didn't gain much by copying his cartoon face drawing technique.

Just a cluster of stuff, but I was pretty happy with how I'd begun to understand cylinders a bit more. Charcoal on the black water bottle was a mess. I'd finished the beginner class by this point, and it becomes clearer in my pages that I'm just sorta drawing stuff on my coffee table.

Found working with charcoal, even when drawing figures quickly really worked for me. A happy surprise! Still scared of eyeballing how tall the thing needs to be (seven heads tall?), and then learning how that evolves into portioning out different segments of a figure. Exciting challenges!

The articulated form era begins. Took me a while to understand, deep down, how the curved lines at the ends of each cylinder show which direction the limb is pointing.

Some still life homework. While I didn't really nail the collection of objects up above, I was stoked by that clementine in the bottom right. Feel like I had somewhat of a handle on shading an object that was mostly one color. And the shadow helped give it dimension. Drawing fruit is fun, I guess?

My first fluke. I was stoked with how this ended up. It was fun to make and it's fun to go back to because it looks just like my boy. Held it up to show my teacher like a kindergartner. First piece I felt confident enough to set with hairspray, and I'm glad I did!

Another try at the same configuration of fruits and veggies. Had to just trust the teacher when trying to draw a bunch of blueberries, and not attempt to craft each individual one. "There are no lines, only values," he said. And it took me some time to internalize that. Wasn't too unhappy with it!

Started charcoal--something I never thought I'd like--and ended up clicking with it more than anything I've tried so far. Turns out, drawing a still life of fruit taught me a lot. No wonder all those artists did this. Still barely any dimension to the images, and needed to work on middle values.

Mix of practice and a first attempt at drawing fruit. For the first time since college, I didn't care if I pleased the teacher or even 'improved', really. Felt good to take a class just to learn, without needing it to pay off in some way. Proud of that apple, but the notes are right. Middle values!

First 'No Fear Beginner's Drawing Class' one year ago. Started with spheres; got humbled real fast. I've even tried spheres before. . I struggled with understanding where I should shade and how much. It's not something that came intuitively to me at all, but I just let it be bad. Felt low-stakes.

Lynch's films are what opened me up to art. From there, I've seen things in a different way. My life has been so enriched by that extraordinary artist, and I'll remember the things he espoused in his writing and interviews--Remain present, write down your ideas, and create art. Rest in peace.