Term 2, Figure Drawing II, Week 3
For a description of this unit see my Figure Drawing II unit plan. For full context, see the description of my Art Home School Curriculum.
Retrospective
This was another solid week of drawing. I find myself getting excited about oil painting and wanting to jump ahead, but I’m going to wait a few months before I get into that. I can feel myself progressing with figures, which is great, but I can also see that if where I want to be is a high school graduate, then where I’m currently at is in first grade. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I always feel like I’m not doing enough drawing from imagination, but every time I try it I feel like I need to focus on fundamentals first.
Log
Only one hour of study this week for thirty hours of drawing. This is what I like to see. I accomplish this by drawing along with the videos instead of watching them first, then drawing.
Drawings and Critiques
Monday, Feb. 01
Copy Frazetta. This is another Tarzan, but a much looser sketch than last week’s.
Warmup.
Croquis cafe #357.
I’m starting to add in some Reilly rhythms with my gestures. I think they started helping a lot by the end of the week.
Planes of the body — female.
These are strange. They seem to have a lot more Reilly in them than the male planes of the body from last week. There was no way I could have drawn something this symmetrical freehand six months ago.
Tracing Reilly rhythms from comic figures.
The few print comics I own are mostly too dark to do a good tracing over. I should probably just do these digitally, but I am terrible with a stylus at the moment. I need a digital fundamentals unit.
Tuesday, Feb. 02
Copy Frazetta.
Anatomical navigational terms.
Figure sketching.
Warmup.
Croquis cafe #356.
Practicing geometric shapes that resemble human anatomy.
Wednesday, Feb. 03
Copy Frazetta.
I like how the tree turned out. The facial features are too big. I actually go back and fix them the next day.
Warmup.
Croquis cafe #354.
Some days the 1-minute gestures just feel pointless.
Reilly rhythms.
#1 is copying the instructor’s Reilly rhythms, #2 is copying the instructor’s construction method, and #3 is my version from a photo. It looks like mine is missing the tilt of the torso.
Reilly rhythms.
Reilly tracings over photos.
Drawing digitally feels completely foreign to me at this point.
Thursday, Feb. 04
Reilly tracings over photos.
Copy Frazetta.
Here’s the ape with the fixed face. The main problem was the eyes were too big.
Copy Frazetta’s Conan sketch.
Reilly rhythms.
I like my version #3 the best.
Warmup.
Croquis cafe #353.
Reilly rhythms.
Friday, Feb. 05
Copy Frazetta’s Conan sketch.
I didn’t mean to make Conan look 75 years old, but that’s what happened. It’s more difficult to copy these loose sketches than the tighter inks.
Warmup.
Croquis cafe #352.
Reilly gestures.
Ideally I will be able to do something like this for a 5 minute quick sketch. Currently this takes me about 30 minutes.
Saturday, Feb. 06
Warmup.
Croquis cafe #350.
The bottom left was actually 30 minutes. I’m pretty happy with the 5-minute #10 though.
Sunday, Feb. 07
Warmup.
Croquis cafe #349.
I finally figured out to lower the resolution on my camera and that appears to have fixed the issue with Medium changing the aspect ratio of my photos. These might be my favorite 1-minute gestures I’ve done yet.
Reilly gestures.
These are all full page (18" x 24") drawings. Usually I start with the head and the feet just end where they end. For these I mark out the top, bottom, and middle first, then try to fit the figure in that space. It adds a little more complexity. At first I was putting a grid over the photos and trying to line everything up perfectly, but that just led to frustration and minimal progress. I do much better when I just verify the half way point and head size digitally, then measure what I need with my pencil without worrying about a grid.
