A skydive from 16000ft lasts only one minute. In that precious time you can screw up in a hundred different ways. There are a thousand different ways to screw up a drawing in one minute, and this is a catalog of a few. I shall draw you on the beaches, on the landing grounds and on the hills, and I shall never surrender. And you will comment on how "Meh, it's ok but it doesn't really look much like me", 'cause everyone's a critic, goddamit!
Saturday, November 12, 2005
at the cafe
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about that watermark: horrors, I left the office without a single scrap of paper. So I used the back of the paper tablecloth that covered my lunch tray. On the front ,reflective side, was some colour advertising thingy that shows through...
Hi Stejahen, well, sometimes I don't do shading at all in these quick sketches. Or sometimes, as in this case, I just scribble a couple of quick indications of highlight, shade, reflected light, etc, and then fill it in later , sometimes after the model breaks the pose. In this case she did get up and go away and I spent another few seconds filling in the shading from memory and from the hints I had put on the paper. Well, and sometimes they do sit for long enough :). They don't have to keep the same exact pose. As long as they don't go away there are many moments when they will pass briefly through the same pose, or through one of a whole equivalence class of poses that will do well enough for the purpose. It's like National geographic, you keep very still and take snapshots of those brief instants. :) Any technique that depends on the model staying still is flawed for this kind of drawing. (for example, taking "plane" measurements of static angle/distance is completely out). One thing I always do is make sure that the drawing is done, shade and all, in that single sitting, at the very most a few seconds after the model goes away. I never go home and work it, and even playing with the shadows after the model leaves - as in this case - is pretty rare. I feel like I am cheating when I do that, since the point of these exercises was to deal with the process of capturing first impressions, with few artistic or aesthetical concerns.
When I say "technique X is completely out", have in mind that such absolute statements are never completely true. I have done a few of these sketches with such techniques deliberately, precisely to sit and watch in what interesting ways they would break down, or for the rush of using a static technique very very fast, holding your breath and praying for just a couple of seconds of accidental stillness :) Or sometimes you use such techniques internally, to get this or that detail, or to make a doublecheck. In fact, very rarely is a drawing really made in a single technique, except as a deliberate exercise. You are always zapping from one to the other, seamlessly and unconsciously.
By the way, there are so many errors in these drawings! I leave then on, since the rules say I can never edit them later...
Example: Look at the hair on this girl - do you see how warped it is? To the right? The whole skull is bent to the right, I was dealing with the individual shapes too soon and didn't care enough for the infrastructure :)
It is really messy. I am letting you guys take a peak at my most shameful secrets :)
5 comments:
about that watermark: horrors, I left the office without a single scrap of paper. So I used the back of the paper tablecloth that covered my lunch tray. On the front ,reflective side, was some colour advertising thingy that shows through...
Great, as usual. Do you usually do the shading after the sketch? I can't image anyone holding still for very long.
Hi Stejahen,
well, sometimes I don't do shading at all in these quick sketches. Or sometimes, as in this case, I just scribble a couple of quick indications of highlight, shade, reflected light, etc, and then fill it in later , sometimes after the model breaks the pose. In this case she did get up and go away and I spent another few seconds filling in the shading from memory and from the hints I had put on the paper.
Well, and sometimes they do sit for long enough :). They don't have to keep the same exact pose. As long as they don't go away there are many moments when they will pass briefly through the same pose, or through one of a whole equivalence class of poses that will do well enough for the purpose. It's like National geographic, you keep very still and take snapshots of those brief instants. :)
Any technique that depends on the model staying still is flawed for this kind of drawing. (for example, taking "plane" measurements of static angle/distance is completely out).
One thing I always do is make sure that the drawing is done, shade and all, in that single sitting, at the very most a few seconds after the model goes away. I never go home and work it, and even playing with the shadows after the model leaves - as in this case - is pretty rare. I feel like I am cheating when I do that, since the point of these exercises was to deal with the process of capturing first impressions, with few artistic or aesthetical concerns.
When I say "technique X is completely out", have in mind that such absolute statements are never completely true. I have done a few of these sketches with such techniques deliberately, precisely to sit and watch in what interesting ways they would break down, or for the rush of using a static technique very very fast, holding your breath and praying for just a couple of seconds of accidental stillness :)
Or sometimes you use such techniques internally, to get this or that detail, or to make a doublecheck. In fact, very rarely is a drawing really made in a single technique, except as a deliberate exercise. You are always zapping from one to the other, seamlessly and unconsciously.
By the way, there are so many errors in these drawings! I leave then on, since the rules say I can never edit them later...
Example: Look at the hair on this girl - do you see how warped it is? To the right? The whole skull is bent to the right, I was dealing with the individual shapes too soon and didn't care enough for the infrastructure :)
It is really messy. I am letting you guys take a peak at my most shameful secrets :)
This whole blog is a catalog of defeats...
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