Figure Drawing October

I completely forgot to photograph and post October’s figure drawings, here they are! I tried my hand at charcoal again, a material I have a love-hate relationship with. I love the soft shades you can create with it, but I find it quite difficult to work with.

Stylization Experiments

This is the view I wish I had! I’m only 165 cm so I saw mostly other people’s heads. Still enjoyed it though! My boyfriend took this picture.

I had the pleasure to attend a rock concert again after years! I had given me and my boyfriend tickets to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers last Christmas, and a few weeks back it was finally time. I’m in no way a regular, but when I attend I always immensely enjoy it – live music is really a totally different experience than listening to the same song on record. Though it was kinda short, the end felt a bit rushed and they didn’t play Under The Bridge for some reason, I had an amazing time.

This experience led me to draw the band members and experiment with simplification. I love adding little details, but I feel my work can be stronger by leaving out more and focus on what matters.

I’ve only finished Anthony, because finding the look I wanted proved to be quite the challenge. I changed the pose and shapes countless times, going back even after I started blocking in colour.

When I felt I had the pose figured out, I might have gone astray again by creating more visual noise with detailed shading and tattoos.

I like the result! But I’m afraid I won’t finish the other band members!

#PleinAirpril2022

Is May the month with the most art challenges? I think #mermay has been around the longest, but now there is also #myticmay and #misadventuremay… I’m skipping all of them, as I need to rest a bit from the challenge I undertook during April: Plein Airpril!

As the name suggests, Plein Airpril is all about completing a plein-air painting each day during April. It’s initiated by Warrior Painters and there are prizes to be won for both traditional and digital painters. You don’t have to do all your paintings outside from life (which is the definition of working en plein air), but it is encouraged. I did a mix of both painting from life and from photographs (I shot myself).

I hadn’t planned to join this challenge but when I saw Audra Auclair joining on Instagram (and had read there were prizes involved), I decided I wanted to do this too. I really enjoyed painting studies earlier this year and this could be just the thing I needed to pick that up again.

I hoped I wouldn’t regret this hasty descision; April looked already like it was going to be a busy month. It sure has been a hassle to make time for the paintings from time to time. Luckily I could finish a few in advance so I didn’t have to paint during my vacation in the last week of April. But overall, I’m glad I did it! I tried a lot of new brushes in Procreate, and I think I found a new favorite. I also learned that when painting form life, you don’t have to get the colours exactly right to achieve likeliness, as long as the relationship between them is accurate. Technically speaking: if the values are right and the colour temperature is in the ballpark, you can increase contrast or saturation, it will still look ‘right’.

I experimented with simplifying shapes too, especially in noisy backgrounds. Sometimes it looked nice and stylized, othertimes like the blur from a photograph with a shallow depth of field – and sometimes it didn’t work. But that’s what experimenting is for!

If you want to see all the paintings, go to my Instagram page where they were posted daily in order!

Figure Drawing Again!

Last Monday I had the opportunity to draw from a life model again – something I did as much as I could when I was still studying. After my graduation I occasionally went to Schets Sessie 2.0 but these stopped in 2020. With things opening up again, I hunted the internet for new opportunities and I found one in https://modeltekenclub.nl/!

Apart from being good practice, I find it also really enjoyable to draw from life. Perhaps because I get the chance to work much larger than I regularly do.

I do hope more people will show up next time, though; I was the only one! An almost private modelling session is nice but I also go to meet new artists… Next week is the next session, who knows!