Friday, July 22, 2011

Drawing Lab July

The beginning of july gave me so little studio time that I didn't want to 'waste' any time on any kind of warm up exercise like the doing Labs from Carla Sonheim's Drawing Lab, but further along the month I sort of started to miss it, so I have picked it up again. And here are some of the results of what I've done so far in july.

The exercises all seem to be about the imagination this time, so no drawings from real life or anything realistic really. I thought this was big fun though! ;-)

Lab 26 was about drawing one eyed monsters. That was all the info you got. You had to draw a one eyed monster. I never thought I could do that, but I guess monsters aren't so tough after all. They just act that way.

Lab 26 - one eyed monsters
I liked the first one so much that I decided to do a second one in full color! Wonder what kind of monster this is? Well it's the one-eyed-one-tailed-one-crowned-four-colored-canary-on-a-swing of course! Duh!

Lab 26 - one eyed monsters
Both monsters were drawn with my favorite markers of the moment. The Pitt Big Brush! Ooh, they are luscious! (Yes, this is shameless advertising, but I'm not affiliated with them, promise). I wish I could afford the whole set!

For Lab 30 you had to make paper dolls. I didn't exactly get around yet to making actual paper dolls. It was really hard for me to just draw a figure that I actually liked enough. Here's the first try:

Lab 30 - paper dolls
It was also hard for me to just fit a figure on the page. I've said this before with the figure drawing lab. I find it difficult to see how things spread on a page and usually end up with the page being too small. (Sure, blame it on the page, it's not like your figures are too big.)

I tried to go for a little more whimsy in the next try. I liked the face on the left figure, but still she seemed too....I don't know...girly. I was going for a little more than that. I was going for a little sexy actually! So I tried the girl on the right and that was already a lot more to my liking.

Lab 30 - paper dolls
 And then it hit me! What I wanted was my version of a sexy Gil Elvgren pin up girl. So I got out the book I have about him and started adapting these sexy ladies with the pouted mouths to my own liking. By the way, if you don't know who I'm talking about, go check out this site.

Lab 30 - paper dolls
 The girl on the left is very roughly done after one of his paintings, but no no no, still not right (and again it does not fit the page). Then the girl on the right happened. It's the same pose and type of lingerie, but more in my own style. I'm still not 100% happy with it (she's still too girly), but I'm slowly moving in the right direction. I have not done any more of these yet, but I think it may be an interesting subject to explore in my sketchbook someday.

Time to move on to another lab! Lab 31 had you do random scribbles and then you had to make something out of them. Oh, this is so much fun! I made a doggie and a bug.

Lab 31 - scribble
I really like the exercises where you sort of have to make something out of nothing. It really gets your imagination going and you get to surprise yourself too. At first I'm always thinking there can not possibly be an image in something like a scribble, but there always is. Cool!

The next lab was sort of a variation on that theme, but instead of scribbles you had to use paint blots! Just random paint blots. And lo and behold, I came up with two quite lovely pages. Well, at least I think so. 

Lab 32 - Paint blots - The dream of the flying elephant
Making these was like drawing dream images. All sort of strange associations started to happen. I get Carla now when she says in the book it's like your very on Rorschach test!

Lab 32 - Paint blots - The kiss
For some reason I had an incredible need to name them both and so I did. I will definitely try this exercise again, because it's one of my favorites so far. I'm not alone in this. My friend Monk has become quite the expert in what she calls 'ugly creatures', which are also done by seeking forms in random painting. Check out her blog, for instance here.

The last lab I've done so far was lab 33. This is all about doodling. I am a great admirer of people who can doodle wonderful pictures and the examples in the book are breathtaking. I found it relaxing to do and enjoyed it a lot, but I'm not too happy with the first result.

Lab 33 - doodling
Because the doodling had to be 'mindless' I listened to one of Ricë's podcasts, the one with Seth Apter. I totally recommend all her podcasts by the way. Check them out here for when you are doodling yourself. It took me a while before I could really get into it though, the doodling I mean. I think I may need to practice it more.

So yesterday I tried a different approach and didn't listen to anything while I made this.

Lab 33 - doodling
I like that one a lot better already. The first one is pattern pattern pattern, but this one actually has some sort of layout and I find that more attractive to look at. Well, there's another thing to practice in my sketchbook: becoming a mindless doodler!

That's all the drawing lab I have to show for now. On another note you might like to know I actually finished ROD2 yesterday and will probably show it to you on monday. For now I wish all of you a wonderful weekend and I sure hope you have some time to be artsy!