Paper and Threads

I am trying multiple methods to improve figure drawing and at this moment I'm still primarily doing outline drawings.  During April I recycled a book of Michaelangelo's sonnets and I incorporated some of his drawings among the new pages for inspiration.  The above sketch is based on a Posemaniacs.com figure of the day.  I used pencil and some watercolor wash.   

Several sketches from a photo of a baby - to try to capture their chubby hands, chubby feet, and big eyes.  These sketches were done using colored pencil on one of the original sonnet pages that are on the back of the page with Michaelangelo's drawings.

This is my journal page from May 1st - another daily pose from posemaniacs.com.  Yesterday I posted this week's EDM Challenge which was done on May 2nd.  Tomorrow I'll post museum-inspired journals pages from May 3rd and 4th.  I'll then continue to post journal pages sequentially and I'm just hoping that I have time to post everyday in MAY.

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    I draw everyday so my commitment for this month is to upload one of my journal pages for every day in the month - which I never previously have done.  This one will be out of order because I wanted to post my EDM challenge today.  On Sunday I'll upload all of the other sketches.

Three "sorta" round wheels:  I was leaving the International Center of Photography exhibit several weeks ago - really inspired by Henri Cartier Bresson's philosophy about impulsive actions, when a red pedicab pulled up to the light as I was crossing 6th Avenue.  The beautiful driver, then sat up and placed her hands on her hips - exuding power and confidence.  I managed to quickly take one photo before the light changed and she pedaled on, but I was fearful about sketching from the photo because I couldn't figure out how to sketch so many spokes on 3 wheels.  I even asked for advice from this group - and sketched "the anatomy of a bicycle wheel "from our bike rack at work.  But, when I saw the magnificent tandem bicycle in the large painting by Ramon Casas at the Barcelona exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I realized the wheels had NO SPOKES - and I might never have noticed if I weren't obsessing over this photo.  As soon as Karen announced the challenge for the week, I knew I had to do this - without spokes. 

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EDM Challenge #116: Draw Something Green:  I searched all week for something green that was interesting and exciting enough for me to use for this challenge.  I gathered up my apartment green objects for my Color Project Green month last year, so I was more interested in finding something in another environment.  Today I went over to the new Greek-Roman Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and sketched the south end of the gallery for an hour.  Then as soon as I started to wander around the space, I found wonderful Roman glass from the 1st C. A.D.  This green glass vessel is only 6 inches high, but so beautiful!

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In 2003 I purchased a set of postcards of Leonardo DaVinci's portrait drawings during a visit to Vinci, Italy and his museum there.  One of the drawing exercises from a book I'm working through was to use a grid to reproduce a drawing and I decided to try it with a Leonardo portrait.  It was great fun - and I decided to leave my grid marks in place so I could remember the utility of the exercise and method.

More figure sketches from my Yoga "How-To-Book" - purchased only to use for figure drawing practice.  These are definitely challenging because of the extreme body positions and work very well for my daily sketches when I'm too tired to compose a more complicated daily sketch page in my journals.

This year I hope to draw many more figures to develop some basic skills - but still don't have time for organized life drawing sessions.  I bought John Raynes' book The Figure Drawing Workbook at Green and Stone in London and I'm working through the lessons and exercises slowly.  These are a few of the first sketches completed.  I'm doing them in my recycled book of Michaelangelo sonnets, so you'll see one very yellowed page that I rebound from the original book.  The figure sketched on the sonnet page is actually inspired by Posemaniacs.com - the Japanese site that Cully recommended in one of his EDM messages.  I'm trying to use regular pencils, colored pencils, Conte pencils, and watercolor so I can also explore different media and papers. 

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I'm slowly working my way through Anne Elsworth's book and Lesson 3 is drawing "negative space."  This concept is never in my mind when I'm sketching and my spacing would be so much better if I could remember to combine positive and negative space. 

For the first exercise I sketched an old kitchen stool by just filling in the negative spaces.  I used a Derwent 4B pencil with a light wash.

For the second exercise, I trimmed a plant and taped the leaves randomly to a piece of paper.  Then I used an Albrecht Durer watercolor pencil to sketch the negatvie spaces.

For the last exercise, I created a kitchen "still life" and then sketched using a combination of positive and negative spaces. 

I hope that this practice will make me remember how useful it is to always look at the negative spaces when sketching.  I know it intellectually, but just don't "see" them when I'm in the midst of a sketch.

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