Sketchi Do Daa

 

So more sketch highlights, here. These come from a 6X9 Moleskine I received as a gift.  (The above image comes from watching TV).

 

  I've started putting page quotas in my daily calendar again: It's pretty good if you get self conscious about drawing(sometimes I refer to it as "Page Fright". 'Course, it's a SKETCHbook, so if every page looks perfect, you're probably doing something wrong.

 

A variant on the quota. The Daily Composition: The only chapter of "The Natural Way to Draw" that I re-read obsessively. (And also place on my daily calendar).

 

 Manifest boredom combined with a "Territory Ahead" Clothing Catalog. If you find one of these strange documents, note that the Women's clothing are all modeled, and the men's clothing is all folded and laid out on tables. Why are there no men wearing Clothing? Does Territory Ahead have a huge closet of Naked Men somewhere? (On the psychological level, don't we all?)

  Like my previous "Totoro" post, I figured I'd show my WORST sketchbook sketch, either for fun or just to make the better ones worth looking at.  Anyway, I found that I'd skipped a couple of pages, which I think counts...

 

 ... Because even the worst artists get better, but only if they continue. 

Sketch'n away

Just completed another 8.5X11 Sketchbook. This one was started last October, Honestly, I don't think I'm going through these fast enough.

Sketch on site at a local beach. You can see some of my insane ramblings scribbled in the margins. This regards my experimentation with "Picture Box" composition.

A roughly 5"x7" Daily Composition memory drawing, circa December. I remember this scene had a lot of appeal.

Some on-site impressions with a slightly cleaner line, with continued insane ramblings. Special Guest Appearance by Batman.

If I had my druthers, I'd be tearing through these things about one a month. Oh well, we'll see.

Effing around

I find one of Kimon Niccolaides' most valuable endorsements in "The Natural Way to Draw" is that of the Daily Composition: one 15 minute sketch per day of a scene from memory. The text is very specific that the Daily Composition doesn't have to be any good, it just has to be drawn every day.

On the sketchbook page, it just feels right, I really don't know why.

Anyhow, I thought I could devote some of my DC's to experimenting with an all-digital workflow, which I think is a bit of a challenge since all I've got is this cruddy little bamboo tablet, no screen tablets or magic pens here that let me, y'know, see what I'm doing. So far, it feels like a blind contour with really soft charcoal.

Yeah, some more sketches

Even though as of late, it seems all I post here are sketches, I might as well post something and that something being more sketches here goes.

Here are some birds from a pretty kick ass aviary at the local zoo. I'd enjoy going to the zoo more if it weren't for children always being there. For a guy who would do anything to produce children's entertainment, I sure spend a lot of time hating and resenting the little brats.

Here is a car. In order to widen my range, I've picked out several spots to sketch on site at, and since I live in a central coast 'burg complete with beaches and a harbor, I've decided to draw cars at the freeway overpass.

The really interesting thing about this fellow is that he actually had no ears and big flippers for hands, making this study in brush tip marker more accurate that you could ever suspect!

I was watching "Son of the Mask", so here's some caricature impressions from TV; Jaime Kennedy et all. The very valuable lesson I learned from all of this is: Don't watch "Son of the Mask".

Annnd that's some sketches done from March to the present.I'm planning a big project for this fall, so some finished artwork will be appearing soon.

Now with more Elephants!

The portfolio section of my site wirtsalthouse.com has been updated. A couple of pieces have been replaced, while others, like the sketchbook excerpts, have been "special editioned" with more content.

Before

After, still not remixed in five channel sound, though.

Some more sketchcerpts

More unsolicited sketchbook drawings, I'm afraid.

These are from two books: an 11"X14" hardbound sketchbook and one of those nifty (if obscenely expensive) pocket moleskins.

I could claim this person doesn't have clothes or toes because it's a gesture drawing, and thus emphasizing movement, weight and balance over detail, but I just happen to hate clothes and toes and go without either whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Know what? Everybody loves Gorillas! If I just did nothing but post pictures of gorillas, I might have more followers. And they usually don't wear clothes, which makes me 1/2 happier.

Then again, sheep are fun. They're fluffy and stupid. They also don't have toes like primates, so that's cool too.

You might suppose I saw these Giraffes at the Zoo. And maybe I did, and maybe there was just a loose Giraffe wandering around the canned goods isle at Lucky's and I happened to have my sketchbook with me! That would make a very good moral: always bring your sketchbook to Lucky's lest you find exotic quadrupeds in canned goods.

Some more twaddle

Okay, so I've finished another 8 1/2" by 11" sketchbook, so you get to view the dregs. Also for extraneous reasons, the scans are pretty rough this week.

Some more aerobics video impressions.

Shamless copies (or "studies") of illustrations from "The Complete Bridgman" an artist referred to by Andrew Loomis in his book "Figure Drawing for All It's Worth". Loomis is known as an Artist's Artist, which might make George Bridgman the Artist's Artist's Artist. My copies don't do him justice in the least, though.
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Dividends from my Zoo membership: Golden Lion Tamarins. These little monkeys never stop moving, so they're quite a challenge, even just for scribbly gestures.

This goat's older than hell and is fun to look at in the petting zoo pen when he propositions the sheep (that's "Sheep" and not "other goats right there in the pen").

The Leopards are rare to see, and when you do, they're sitting around or sleeping, typical cats.

Drawing naked people is a great way to prove what a serious artist you are, this was from the first day of an Adult Ed. figure drawing class I took.

Oh yeah, and last Wednesday, the Zoo unveiled some new Asian Otter Pups.

1 Month, Flat

... That's how long it took me to finish this midsize moleskine sketchbook I revived for my birthday. I started it this August and finished the sucker two days ago.

I went and got a Zoo membership, so I've been doing stuff like this 2-3 times a week to bone up on my animal-drawing skills.

Drawing in china marker is like drawing with rocks tied to your fingers. You can't focus on those lovely, tiny little details and are forced to think in terms of shape and gesture. Like pen, it doesn't erase, so I find it suitable for quick-sketching.

...And here's a little modeling ("shading") practice for those of you who think I'm all gesture and mouth.

Plus I've started studying anatomy. By "Study" I mean "copying stuff out of books", by "books" I mean the anatomy chapters in "Figure Drawing for All it's Worth" by the incomparable Andrew Loomis(and that's just for starters).

I've been doing a bit more sketching from TV. I've complained before about the difficulties in getting a gesture from television. But, to paraphrase the great philosophical Brain Trust of our time, Devo(well, maybe my parent's time): When a challenge comes a long...

... Whip it, whip it good.

Top Secret Drawing Reference

Previously, I yammered on on how it's hard to draw from TV.

But that was before I found these neat reference videos designed solely for gesture studies.





The models are shot in long-shot or full-shot at nearly all times, so the artist can see how the entire figure reacts to a movement, and distributes weight around.
Like action analysis classes, the models move fast, forcing the artist to cut unnecessary details, and they repeat each action several times, providing opportunity to focus on the movement and revisit a pose in action, rather than at rest.
These videos are affordable. At a thrift store, you can find an hour of useful sketch fodder on VHS for 50 cents. That's less than a pack of chewing gum. Since they're cleverly disguised as "exercise" merchandise, you could conceivably have some in your house or place of dwelling right now!

There are some drawbacks. The models tend to be more "pose" than "personality", which, in my case, makes for kinetic drawings, but with a certain sterility of character. Also, the poses are dynamic but unnatural, which helps me break away from the standard "S-curve of standing man" formula, but seem to lack applicability toward character-based narrative. ...And the noise Richard Simmons makes at 0:25 is deeply disturbing.

TV is a Harsh Mistress

You hear the cold, cruel advice often: "Draw every day. Draw from life. If you can't draw from life, draw from TV".
Drawing from TV, however, blows.

Above are impressions from Steamboat Bill Jr. You can also see me practicing Glen Villipu style torso shapes. Even in silent films, which feature more full shots than modern movies, the figures whip around so fast it's hard to observe them long enough for a good enough gesture. One also winds up with a great deal of cutoff feet due to the ruling dominance of the medium shot.
Here's more of the same, scribbly, formless, no feeling of weight whatsoever, and that's when you can find a flick which actually cuts to a full shot once in a while so you can see what holds those people up. I find the more physical film venues, like ballet, televised sports, or old Hollywood Musicals are usually more rewarding fodder for a hungry sketchbook than, say, sitcoms or action movies, bu-uuut...

I like the stuff that comes from my sessions of actual observation more.

Even the best digital IMAX quality whatevers in the world can't match the whatever-it-is that being there provides. There's simply more to observe than the narrow stream of information from a sequence of preselected camera shots, from attitudes to visual detail to ambient sounds, smells, temperatures and the way your butt hurts from sitting on a goddamned rock in the park for upwards of 40 minutes at a time.
I have a little more time to develop the sketches, even in cases where the figure is moving pretty quickly, like the Sea Lion. I feel like I got a bit more feeling of mass and weight in these than the TV studies.

TV is good for practicing caricature, though.

Like watching the Kenneth Branagh version of "Much Ado About Nothing"
Or "Stephen King's It".

Like most of my sketchbook endeavors, this stuff is more miss than hit (if at all), but there are plenty of closeups to examine heads with, as well as people playing and exhibiting definite personalities to capture, which most (airbrushed) photographs won't give you if you're drawing famous people.

Ideally, I'd be able to hike to the park every day just to spy on people, but this often isn't practical, so I make do for now with the magic glowing slab, almost as tasty as real life, with half the calories.