Paper and Threads

Suhita Shirodkar, who is one of the regular teachers at the USK Symposium, has a Craftsy Class about figure drawing using "Lines of Action" to quickly express movement.  I periodically practice this technique, using photos from magazine ads and scrap paper.  in her class she uses photo references to teach her technique, and then uses video clips to demonstrate drawing from moving figures.  Here are 6 figures drawn from photos, and 2 figures drawn while I watched ballet dancers warm up.  As soon as Spring arrives I need to go sit and watch figures doing something other than just walking!  There are baseball fields, and  basketball and tennis courts in Central Park - maybe that would be a good starting place.

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I am learning a great deal about creating comic books.  This is way out of my comfort zone, but the class is set up so that we go slowly through the different stages of development.  I created 4 characters and sketched "turnarounds" - front, back, and side views.  The next steps were to build their world, develop the characteristics - good and bad - for each character, and now write a synopsis of the story for our next class. 

Step 2:  Building a World

My characters live on the moon, but accidently travel to Earth.  I used some NASA photos of the moon surface to figure out how to draw craters, and made up the rest.   I was surprised to see Earth clearly above the horizon of the moon in their photos.

Axel and Alice mistakenly start his mother's small space ship, so this is them next to the Space Ship. 

These are just sketches and later will need to be made as panels, of varying sizes.  A standard comic book is 22 pages.  We only have to write a short story and prepare 3 pages - each of which may have as many as 6 panels.   

This is a link to my first blog post with Character "Turnarounds." 

http://www.paperandthreads.com/2018/02/comic_book_illustration_at_fit.php 

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I just finished my 5th Sketchbook of Body Parts - and I know that I still need to practice more.  I continue to save magazine advertisements so I can use them for Deliberate Practice.  These are the two drawings I did in February.  Some months there are more, but this month I've been writing every day. 

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The NYC Weekday Urban Sketchers met at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church for the twice per semester Juilliard Concert of the Historical Performance Graduate Students who play early music.  I arrived 15 minutes before the doors opened and made a quick sketch of the building at CPW and W65th St.

I've previously sketched players and their string instruments at this concert, and wanted to sketch the harpsichord player during the concert.

This is a wonderful free concert, and it is first come, first serve seating.  Our group members met after the concert to show their drawings and there were so many different types of drawings, including the 4 big stained glass windows. 

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Joseph Cornell - detail from one of his 12 Boxes inspired by Juan Gris.  Not my favorite art, but I wanted to remember working in a series.

We wandered around trying to find a gallery that inspired all of us, and Pat suggested a random painting by Georges de la Tours, called the Fortune Teller.  We all picked one of the figures to draw. 

Here we are in front of the painting.  My sketchbook page is above.  On the photo below you can't see the sketches in Paula's or my sketchbook, so Pat just drew them in on her iPAD! 

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