Playing a little bit of catch-up today. This was a little figure I copied earlier this week. The artist I was copying is someone I've been following on Instagram - Tony Sketcha (if that's his real name, that's pretty cool ;). I really like his stuff. The way he interpreted this figure is so so pretty, like she's coming out of the mist or something. And it's not too mysterious when you really look at it--all the shadows just fade into a flat-ish value, which is really cool (though I'm guessing he took a little artistic license with the lower half of her face. And I say flat-ish because there definitely is some variation). But having the foresight to be able to do that from the get-go? That's something mysterious ;). My daughter looked at one of my figure drawings today and said, "It looks really easy when you look at it. But not when you try to draw it." Pretty good insight for a 5-year-old.
I taped up my paper right next to the printed off drawing and tried to draw with as few measuring techniques as possible. No plumb line, top/bottom lines or anything. Just trying to make sure I don't get too reliant on that stuff, and it's definitely not a super accurate copy, so there you go. I think it's good to shake things up here and there, though. I think maybe he uses a little bit softer lead than I was using here (I was using HB) to get those dark accents. So lovely.
In other news, I did a really awful painting today. I'm not even going to share it. I don't know if I'm getting a lot worse or my perception for what is good is getting a lot better, ha :P Maybe some of both. It seems like the chunks of time I'm finding for this lately are pretty minuscule, and that's probably a big part of the problem. I'd like to set up a still life that will last for a while and see what I can do with a little more time (30-60 minutes really isn't all that long to finish a painting after all, right? ha). But maybe I'll do another copy next. I don't know. Art is hard.
Stacy, beautiful drawing! In the atelier lineage from FAA usually they will pose the model in front of a dark background, which is almost as dark as if not darker than the shadow on the model. This forces one to look at light and shadow patten as abstract design, and focus less on the different "parts" of the figure. It is usually not done in the GCA tradition which focuses more on form drawing/painting and less on atmosphere, in more flat lighting. The two traditions are represented more tellingly by Zorn and bouguereau. Both are valid approaches. If you enjoy more atmospheric Setup, definitely try a darker background on the model, and you can see abstractions like this more easily! In our atelier we do it for king poses but a lot of time in two-hour poses we pull out a white curtain behind the model to make it easier to see the sillouette, in which case it may be hard to combine the shadow and the background...
ReplyDeleteAhhh, okay. Now I'm trying to remember what color the curtain is at the studio? Ha. I'll have to pay more attention to that next time.
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