tv sketches

Started a new sketchbook tagged "heads", I'm trying to fill a page or two everytime I watch a movie or tv series. Heads, hands and feet are a some of those things I'd like to put in some work on next year.

Cafe sketches + Acrylics & Charcoal experiments

You can probably tell I have some off work, I've been spending most of my time drinking coffee with friends and drawing. I really have to try and book a month off next year to just travel around with my sketchbook, but first I have to develop some more sketch techniques.

One thing that kills my sketches is when people seem to be aware that you are drawing them, once that happens it kills my sketchbuzz. I just hate the idea of making somebody uncomfortable for my own enjoyment :D That's what happened in my first sketches, I then moves to the window and just took mental snapshots of people passing by and trying to draw what I remembered.

I then watched Battle Royale and tried out some more acrylic paintings (relatively quick ones) and 2 charcoal drawings. trying to focus on heads since that's still a weakness of mine, I really think that if I strengthen my understanding of the head that I will be able to draw better quicksketches, right now I'm kind of limited with my knowledge. Of course as the same time looking to just gain some milage with acrylics, I don't want to do paintings for hours, I would like to find a way to use it for loose sketches that keep some life in them. I'm also limiting myself to black and white to work a bit on tone.

Trying out Acrylics

So for Christmas I got myself an easel and some acrylic paints! I haven't touched paint for years..and my memories are the kind of things that I wake up from in my sleep sweating and screaming. But I figure that since I am now better at drawing, that hopefully I'll be able to achieve some better results.

Right off the bat I think I'll have to get myself an A1 pad, I just hate using small brushes. These little ones were on A4..they kinda looked like crap so I am presenting them cropped in so you can focus on the paint texture instead of the actual painting :P

St. Stephens Green Cafe sketches

There's a pretty cool coffee place in St Stephens Green shopping center where you can draw people coming down from the shops from the 2nds floor. So nobody knows you're sketching them and you also can't really make out faces, so it's easier to just draw a loose little gesture.

All sketches here were pretty small using a HB pencil:

Live Basketball gestures 6B pencil

So normally when I do gestures from film or sports footage I pause and jot down a quick gesture, but today I watched a live stream of an NBA game (Knicks vs Wizards) and did some sketches as the game played.

I am surprised that the sketches looked kinda ok...it's literally an exercise of taking a snapshot and putting it down with as little lines as possible. It definitely helps to draw small...another thing I hope to do a bit more often..definitely see a benefit to doing this.

Figure Sketching - CHARCOAL + PASTEL

There are no more life drawing sessions this year, but with so many great resources available online there is never an excuse to not keep up the habbit.

These are using Croquis Cafe on youtube. I used charcoal again as last week to try and gain a better grasp on the medium, I also branched out on some pastel on brown paper for an extra experiment. All drawings were done on an A4 pad:

1 minute:

2 mins:

I really like the one below where I focussed more on line instead of tone.

2x 5 min poses:

Different model, a couple of 1 mins:

And here some pastel, I wanted to paint in the white and smudge it as I would smudge charcoal on smooth paper, but that just didnlt work so I had to draw in atches of white..definitely going back to this, maybe using a wider range of pastel colors.

Dead Zoo studies + people Sketching

I went to the Natural History Museum in Dublin again to study cats. Before I went in I did some gestures with a rotring pen which I've been trying to get used to using. But it makes me feel like I can't draw, so I eventually switched to a HB pencil....these are the drawings I'll post first....scroll down to find the horrible pen drawings.

OK below some pen drawings..

The mouse thingie is a colorpencil:

And below an assortment of sketches I did in coffee places. These are usually people walking by the window. I'm pretty crap at those...still a code I eventually. one day hope to crack. I think people who draw a lot of cartoony stuff will find this a lot more enjoyable, for people who rely on observation it can be quite frustrating.....