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Not at all like riding a bike.

I've been drawing at the open life drawing sessions every week, and I'll just say that I was way out of practice. I noticed a lot of lost dexterity and lack of patience in my drawings starting out. But the last two sessions have gone a lot better. I've been trying to work on nailing down proportions, good line weight and value variation, accurate musculature, and accurate values. Most of the poses have been pretty short, rarely over 30 minutes so the value studies are a little harder to come by.



This was an hour pose from last week. There are a few good things going on, but I don't think the value really strengthened the drawing at all. In some areas it makes the forms confusing.



These two are from last week as well. One is a 10 minute pose and the other was 15 or 20.




Here I was just playing around during the 5 minute warm up drawings. All were done in 5 min. except the bottom facial study which was 10.



20 min. pose



30 min. pose



This last one was 45 minutes.

Inspirations, Influences, and Aspirations Part 2

The other day I stumbled across this blog and thought I might share. Artist/illustrator Matt Zitman posted a substantial collection of figure drawings. The drawings are much more caricature than our anatomically accurate, academic type drawings. Never-the-less, his drawings are beautiful. There's something really funny about his exaggerations, but he still displays a well rounded understanding of the body. In class, Amy often stresses the importance of exaggerating certain features i.e. curves of the spine, the long axis of the femur etc. Of course Matt takes that to a much greater extreme, but I think his drawings are a good example of really capturing the pose and form of the model. Below are a couple drawings from his blog.

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Inspirations, Influences, and Aspirations Part 1

One of my biggest inspirations the last couple years has been illustrator Hermann Mejia. Although Mejia does a lot of work for Mad Magazine, don't disregard him as an amazing painter, draftsman, and all around cool artist. One thing that struck me about Mejia, aside from his hilarious and grotesque caricatures, is his watercolor paintings. They are so loose yet controlled, something that I've been struggling with ever since I picked up my first set of Crayola watercolors when I was in grade school. His mastery of the medium is apparent when looking over all his illustrations. In addition to watercolors, he plays around with a fair amount of mixed media which I find the most interesting.

Every character that Mejia creates is so dynamic and original. Sam Viviano, art director of Mad Magazine, told my manager, who in turn told me how Mejia actually brought a real casket into his studio to fully capture a seemingly unimportant prop for one of his MAD movie parodies. It's that sort of attention to detail that I'd like to incorporate more into my work.

I strongly suggest that everyone check out his website and prepare to be blown away: Hermann Mejia

Below are a varied selection of his works.

Another semester, another blog post.

I had a very interesting summer. With regards to drawing, I did a lot of it. If I had my way, I would have done more, but life intervenes. The drawing I was doing this summer was basically broken up into three categories: theme park caricature, freelance illustration work, and sketchbook junk.



I finished up my third season at Valleyfair, and instead of focusing on drawing really fast and making lots of moneys, I wanted to slow down and really do some good drawings. At times this is frustrating due to annoying customers, fatigue, and a plethora of other reasons. But at the same time, slowing down allowed me to really enjoy every drawing I was doing rather than crapping out a bunch of so-so drawings. I can't say that there's much or any artistic merit to the theme park work, but drawing that much all summer definitely had its benefits. My manager put it to me this way: we get a new model every 10 minutes, and guess what, they pay US to draw them. We should be so lucky!




I was also fortunate enough to start getting some freelance work for a couple publications in New York. There really isn't a whole lot of creativity that goes into these illustrations as the respective art directors pretty much tell me exactly what they want, but I can't see myself turning these jobs down for a lack of creativity. All of the pieces I've done for them have to deal with local politics, so its hard to really connect to them. I'd really like to continue doing more work like this with the hopes that I'll get to use more of my own creative juices.




Lastly, I've been pounding through a few sketchbooks lately. Mostly I've been trying to experiment with new mediums and styles. I feel like I've gotten stuck in a rut with regards to my use of line. So I've really tried to expand my abilities with ways to depict form or even simple shapes.

I really want to continue the work that I've been doing in my sketchbooks, and apply them to some finished pieces. One thing I regret from the summer is that I didn't get any finished pieces done other than the retail caricatures and freelance work.

The most glorious mustache known to man...

It's so beautiful.



This was a sketch of my summer roommate Dani. She asked me to draw her sometime this summer, and I told her I would do it, but it wouldn't be pretty. I can't wait to show it to her.



Another recent development for me was a little inkage. It took me 4 years to learn to be impulsive.







And lastly, another summer at Valleyfair has come to a close. It was a great season out there. As usual, it was truly a pleasure to work with some amazing artists. These were a few customers that I snapped pictures of on my last day. I was trying not to hold back, but also trying to nail at least one 100% likeness. I think I came close on one or two of them, but there's lots of room for improvements.