Let's dive right in, shall we?
 |
| Jan 21 |
|
 |
| Jan 22 |
 |
| Jan 23 - doodled during perspective class (no disrespect to the great Gary Meyer) |
|
 |
| Jan 24 |
 |
| Jan 25 - trying to be more gestural |
 |
| Jan 26 |
 |
| Jan 27 - just... ugh. The one good thing I can think to say about this is that it was an accurate representation of how tired I was at the time (drawing ability included). |
I would like to state for the record that I am aware that a lot of these are, how do you say... bad. Shitty. Not worthy of the internet. But part of my daily sketch resolution is to post them all here (and on
my Instagram)... for better or for worse. On the one hand, it feels like I'm humiliating myself every other day, which is a bad feeling... but on the other, the fact that I know my friends and family are seeing them every day makes me push myself to do better sketches.
 |
| Jan 28 - looks like perspective HW but isn't. A quick visual from my drive up to Art Center College of Design that day |
 |
| Jan 29 - actual perspective HW (draw your room) in process |
 |
| Jan 30 - completed perspective HW. This is Dave's and my office / guest bedroom / retro videogame area. |
 |
| Jan 31 - super quick celebration of drawing every day for a month. |
Unfortunately sometimes I just don't have the time to make great ones (or even good ones). Editing TV is a standard 10-hour day (10am-8pm). I run in the mornings before work and Dave and I cook most nights after work. And after that it's basically time for bed, rinse and repeat. Plus all the regular life stuff you deal with - grocery shopping, emails, friends. Weekends get crazy with errands and social engagements. Sometimes I try to draw at lunch at work, but I worry about that being company time. If I have time in the mornings post-shower I'll draw then. But generally it's 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there. I want to stress, I'm not complaining. I'm lucky to have a job I enjoy that gives me enough money to attend my art classes and buy my supplies. But time is valuable too. I listened to an audiobook of
Bobby Chiu's "The Perfect Bait" over the winter break, and he stressed the need to MAKE time if you want to get better. So that's what I've been doing.
 |
| Feb 1 - practicing from classic movie still frames |
 |
| Feb 2 - perspective HW #2 (draw an accurately proportioned building given only the measurements) |
 |
| Feb 3 - puppy bowl recap, no photo reference |
 |
| Feb 4 - puppy bowl recap, using photo reference like a good non-lazy artist |
 |
| Feb 5 - This was after about a 14-hour day. Literally got nuthin. |
 |
| Feb 6 - more classic movie practice |
 |
| Feb 7 |
 |
| Feb 8 - getting back to my VisCom roots with some fluffy bunnies |
 |
| Feb 9 - continuing the cute animals kick |
 |
| Feb 10 - Completed perspective HW #4 - draw a building in 2-pt perspective given a plan (overhead) and elevation (front) view. |
SO anyway - all of that was just a roundabout way of saying, when you see a shitty daily sketch - it was probably a really long day but I carved out 10 minutes somewhere to make SOMEthing.
In other news - I am now 4 weeks into my perspective class at
3kicks with
Gary Meyer, who also teaches at Art Center College of Design. He's 78 years old and has a great sense of humor (
this picture is a pretty accurate representation of his personality). He does go EXTREMELY fast though and it's a bit of a struggle to keep up. I'll try to gather my learnings into a post for everyone -
but to be honest, many of the lessons / assignments haven't been terribly practical. However, even though the subject matter can be pretty dry, it's been helping me a LOT, I can already feel it affecting me when I'm drawing. I've started to keep the general 3-D-ness of a drawing in mind, finding the vanishing points - setting an object or a scene
in space instead of just doodling flat with no background/context. (I've also noticed that almost all of the sketches I do from imagination are in 1-point perspective. What's up with that?)
Finally, I just wanted to draw your attention to some new areas of the blog - I now have a Favorite Artists page just to keep track of the great artists who influence me and examples of their work (I would like to update this sometime with links to all their personal websites soon). I also have an instagram feed on the right under my profile. I would love to make a header/banner soon too - but I feel intense pressure to make it AWESOME since it's the first thing people will see when they visit. Any suggestions?
Gina, thanks for posting this. Very nice to see the variety in you work. My favourite page is the one with the rabbits. Looks really nice. Excellent line quality and the rabbits really pop up from the page. How do you do the whites? Is it pencil? It really add a lot of depth in the value scale. And this perspective class, omg, it looks like serious work! Looking forward to see the next batch :)
ReplyDeleteThank you Louis! Yes, the whites on the rabbit page are in white colored pencil. Sometimes I use a white gel pen too. And the perspective stuff looks a lot harder than it actually is, I promise!
DeleteSpectacular work, Gina. Continuing to practice past the point where everything starts falling apart has tremendous merit! In truth, only you know your stuff was not up to your standards. Many of your "bad" sketches look amazing. But even if you think they were "bad" ( we'll have to agree to disagree on that one), you've put in the time and traded it for mileage. You've inspired me to work harder. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteThanks very much! I have learned at this point that it's not about making every single sketch I produce amazing - it's about taking the bad ones in stride, learning from them, and moving on. And more so for me right now the exercise is about keeping my brain in a drawing frame of mind even while having a full time job.
Delete