Personal Best: My Favorite Figure Drawings of 2012

Over the past few months I have begun to take more and more advantage of this blog as a place to put my work.  There are so many advantages to doing this that I never would have considered: it provides a record of my artwork that is almost always available, searchable and accessible.

This blog also gives me an opportunity to review and analyze my work. To run this blog,  I have been forced to photograph, catalog and write about my art work on a regular basis. All things that are easy to forget and slack off on.  However after putting in all this work, as the year is ending, I can for the first time look back over a large amount of work and pick my personal favorites for the year.

I think my figure drawings have been really strong this year. I just got back into regular attendance of a few workshops and classes and am really happy with the end products. I look through the folders of artwork and have so many favorites for this year.

In quite a few of the drawings I have the feeling of, "Wow! I cannot believe I did this." I choose five of my favorites for this post.

Above is a drawing of Adele from December 10th. My favorite thing about it is how I captured the dramatic lighting of the pose. The drawing has a real chiaroscuro, Baroque feel to it.

All the elements in this page are working: the main figure, the gestures behind it and the toned paper. The shadow is also strong; the dark blue is really doing a lot of work dividing the page and putting the main figure forward in the composition.    

Above is a drawing of Katelyn from July 23^rd. There is a great looseness and spontaneity to this drawing that I personally always strive for. I think that was one of the main benefits of the large poster board sized pages I was working with: It kept me frantically working throughout the 20 minutes. 

In some cases the end product was not very good. In others, like this, it is amazing.

The ink wash is also beautiful in this. I particularly love the places it creeps through in the oil pastel. Her stomach is a beautiful patchwork of the layers of oil pastel and the blue underneath. The blue is also making the shadows do neat things. I used burnt sienna for the shadows and where I blended it, like the shadows of her face the vibrant colors mute and darken. In others where I used the burnt sienna thickly it pulls nicely away from the blue wash. A good use of my color theory. Thank you, Professor Toni Martin!  

The drawing is great too. Her hands are a little boxy, but still well defined. I am really proud of this drawing.

This drawing is of Rachel from October 29^th. I really love this drawing because it made a really great page out of the drawings I was having the most trouble with.

For a long time I would regularly attend the WCC figure drawing class. Snowden Hodges who ran the class would often live by the lesson Joseph Sheppard relayed to him, “If you cannot do it in 25 minutes you aren't gonna do it.”

So in classes by Snowden or at WCC, all the poses outside the gestures were 25 minutes. I really got used to that pose length because that was what everything was. There were some exceptions but most telling to me is that I still have playlists on my iPod labeled “Drawing” that are 25 minutes long exactly.

So in these new classes at the art academy and University of Hawaii, I had a lot of problems with the 2 five minute poses and the 10 minute pose. For a while I struggled with what to do with them. One night I tried this and I was so happy with the end result that I have continued to work similarly since.

I really like the figures in this page. I love the hands in the center figure the most. How with just a few lines of oil pastel I was able to define interlocked fingers and their flow. I love how all the figures on the page work. The gestures in the background provide a nice anchor for the 5 minute sketches and the 10 minute sketch on top of it. 

 

This drawing is a recent one from December 16^th of Alex. This was my first time back at the UH figure drawing workshop. I really like the whole page on this one. 

The gestures in this pose are really nice. I think all 4 figures are doing a great job establishing a rhythm in the background. They are like the drum beat, flowing through the piece and capturing movement.

I think the main figure fits well in the page too, almost framing the right corner. It is a great figure with lots of movement and power in the drawing.

This page works really well and that is why it is one of my favorites for the year.  This page has a great set of gestures and a great main figure.  There is also a lot of interplay between the two that makes is dynamic.   I love the two central gestures are looking at the main drawing’s head, pulling attention to it. I love that the right most gesture, which is almost covered by the main figure, its left leg is almost identical to the main figures back arm.    

Above is of Katelyn from September 24^th. It is a pretty straight forward sketch of the model lying down. I sat on the ground to get a more dramatic perspective. I love this drawing.  There is a great feel to it and everything about it is working. 

I really like the shadows of her face. I also love how I rendered her hair. There is a nice "roughness" to this drawing and it is balanced pretty nicely with the delicate figure. Again the energy and spontaneity is nice in it; so much is defined with a few strokes.

This figure also shows a lot of skill in rendering the figure in a short amount of time. I really like how it came out.

"Everything... has to be resolved through rhythms. 

You're constantly massaging each form, 

trying to get it home, 

pushing further and further until these all coalesce

 into a marvelous kind of rhythm 

that reveals the life of the painting." 

~ Leland Bell

Friend Monotypes: All together

On December 30th we celebrated Chris's Birthday in Waikiki. I originally planned to make this series of monotypes as a Christmas gift for this group of friends. However, I waited for them all to be together to get this photo of them holding their portraits. It is a great photo of all of them. Very pleased.

"Smile your best smile at everyone you see. 

Think about all the things you have to be thankful for... 

and smile. 

The world will smile with you."

 ~ Frank Bettger

Framed Christmas Presents

As I hinted at before, I was doing the sketches of my students to frame and give as gifts to their families.

The after school program I help out with is called Autism Arts. The kids in the drawings made the frames the pictures are in out of an old headboard. The students did the majority of the work: they cut the wood with assistance, they glued the frames together, they finished the wood and then did spot refinishing.

It was a great project and it should make a lovely gift for their families.
  

HAA Drawing Class 12-17-12 - Kat

My Monday drawing class is going to be off for the next two weeks. Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve falling on a Monday are great reasons to cancel class.

There was a holiday party during the class; there was food, there was wine and most importantly there was egg nog. Kat was the model and she is so much fun to draw. 

I did really well on the gesture drawings that night. I really like their shape and lines. Above is my favorite page of the night. Kat was standing under the lamp and the shadows it created on her body were very neat.

I also an trying a new ink color background. This purple Magenta. It ia a cool reddish color. I'm really liking it in these sketches.

Above is 2 two minute gestures, 2 five minute poses and 1 ten minute pose. This is not my favorite set of sketches. I may have to scrap the oil pastel and try again.
 

This was the first of the ten minute poses with 3 two minute gestures. I really like this page too. It was a toss up which was the better of the two purple pages. There is a little funkiness with her leg that I could fix up.  I do like how I rendered her hands.

This was the last pose of the night and it needs a little more work to be a great pose. There is a nice feel to it. I like the line quality and motion in the gesture. It just needs a little more time. We will see what I can do with it.


This life drawing class is on Monday at 7PM. It is located at the The Honolulu Museum of Art School, formerly the Academy Art Center at Linekona. There is a 10 dollar class fee.

Friend Monotype 2012: Chris

The last in this particular group of monotypes.  Chris Martin is one of my oldest adult friends.

He is like Johnny Cash, a man in black. I worked had to have a black on black on black theme for this print. He is a Final Fantasy addict and ran a D&D game for this group of friends we all still speak fondly of to this day.

Student Drawings VII

Again a set of student drawings. No names again.

Friend Monotype 2012: Brandon

This is a monotype portrait of my friend Brandon. This is not the first of these I did for Brandon.

So Brandon is my War Machine guru and the man ho got me into that little miniature game. He is also one of my few friends from this circle that I can routinely rope into a Camarilla game, though he very soon realizes his error.  Brandon is always game for a dorky card game, board game or session of an RPG. He also has a ridiculous collection of dice.

Trip to the Aquarium

I took a trip last Sunday to the Honolulu Aquarium. I took the opportunity to do a few sketches of random sea creatures.  I did two drawings that trip.

The above one is of a giant grouper that is in the large shark tank. It had a lot of beautiful spots in its tail.

Above is a nautilus. I was actually really excited because it moved around the tank as I was drawing it. Normally the nautali are rather boring, against a wall not doing much.   When I started drawing this one it began to jet water motor across the tank.

UH Figure Drawing 12-16-12 - Alex

 Last week was the first week I went to the UH figure drawing workshop. It was the first time I went to it in years. At least since 2005.

The model was Alex.  He was wearing a green shit that said, 'black Mormon' he was built like a bodybuilder and there is probably a story as to why he was modeling at the class. He was not dynamic in his poses but he had a good sense of the room.

I had a really good afternoon. 

Above is my favorite of the night, It is 4 two minute poses with 1 20 minute pose in it. This was a rough pose for Alex to keep, all his weight on his arms so had to keep adjusting. However, I think the drawing looks really great.

Above is 1 two-minute gesture, 2 five minute drawings and a ten minute pose. The center pose on this one looks pretty neat.

 I got into trouble after the gesture drawings for using sharpies. The guy running the class said they ban pens with strong smells because of some people in the class's sensitivities. I honestly never realized that could be a concern. I will have to look at non-smelling alternatives. 

 Above is 2 two minute gestures and a 20 minute pose. Again this won looks really good too. I like this page on how it came out.

Above is 3 two minute gestures and a 20 minute pose.  There is again there is a really good feel to this page. I am really getting the hang of figure placement.  

At the workshop I saw Yoko Radke. She is an older woman I would see at the WCC drawing class. Its good to see her still drawing. She is amazing by the way, if you don't know her work I recommend you take a look at this google image search. 

This was the last pose of the afternoon. I had mistakenly been told the pose order so didn't have a gesture page prepped for this one. So it looks a little plain. I will have to use the page in another drawing set in the future.

The UH figure drawing workshop is Sunday at the University of Hawaii at Manoa Art building.  It begins at 9:30 in the morning and runs till 12:30. There is a 5 dollar class fee.