June has been a month with relatively much less studio time than the month of May. Mostly because I was away from home a lot and had my vacation too. That also meant that my studio warm up project - practicing drawing using Carla Sonheim's Drawing Lab - did not get all the time I hoped it would. But I still managed to get some things done. I showed you the first results
here and this post will show the rest from Drawing Lab June!
Lab 14 was the first of two labs on figure drawing. This one was about doing quick sketches, gesture drawings from nude models. The idea was to go a live modeling class, but those are not easy to find around here on my little island, let alone in my studio.
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| Lab 14 - short poses |
Luckily I have a wonderful book by Mark Edward Smith called 'The nude figure', which is made just for such situations. It's full of black and white photographs of nude models, both male and female, in all sorts of positions and movements. Of course it's not the same as a live model, but under the circumstances it was the best I could do.
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| Lab 14 - short poses |
I did a whole lot of pages of these kinds of sketches (much more than I'm showing here) and it was interesting to do. What was the hardest part for me was fitting the model on the page. Apparently it's hard for me to figure out proportions. For that alone this was a good exercise.
After all those quicky sketches lab 15 was all about taking your time and do a 'real' drawing of a model. I was a little nervous about doing that, because I always feel I have no patience to work things out in enough detail for something like that, but lo and behold:
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| Lab 16 - long poses |
I was pleasantly surprised! I think the drawing turned out quite well for a first time model drawing, but what surprised me even more was how relaxing it was to do. I took my time and I really enjoyed it.
After all that 'serious stuff' it was high time to turn on the 'silly' again, which really is what Carla excels in ;-)
The idea was to do drawings that consisted of one continuous line. It was harder than I thought.
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| Lab 18 - one liners |
Carla's examples are way cooler than this. I did however like the faces, so I decided to color some in and see what happened then.
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| Lab 18 - one liners |
A little color makes all the difference. I like these weird faces even if I'm not sure I will ever do them again.
The next section of the book was all about being inspired by famous artists. I did two labs on those. The first one was about Picasso and Carla gives a wonderful easy way to make Picasso like dogs. It's so cool and I swear everybody can do it. Here's one of mine:
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| Lab 19 - picasso dogs |
Now I must admit that my creatures look a lot less like dogs than Carla's but frankly I don't care. I loved drawing these strange animals. The next one is my favorite though:
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| Lab 19 - picasso dogs |
It's much less Picasso, but much more me and isn't it the cutest little thing you ever saw? I will definitely make more of these, they are such fun to do and it's just impossible not to be original, which I really like.
On to Lab 20 which was about being inspired by Joan Miró. I love his work and it was interesting to try to emulate something similar. It was also much harder than it looks.
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| Lab 20 - miró abstract |
Through this lab I came to realise how much abstract art relies on composition, much more than figurative art. If realistic art is not great composition wise it can still be a beautiful rendering of something real. You can admire the picture so to speak or the skill of the artist. But abstract art just falls apart. I have no idea if the above is any good, but I did try to distribute the figures in such a way that it was appealing to at least my own eyes. ;-)
What I loved about these two last labs was that you are taking something from another artist's style without copying them. It really lets you think outside the box in a safe way. Nice!
So now June is over, but the book is not even half way through. Because I am enjoying it so much and because I have done some peeking at the labs to come which I really want to try, I will be continuing with this book in the coming month. So Drawing Lab June will be followed by Drawing Lab July. Let the fun continue!
Wishing you all an artsy weekend!
