I heard Saturday was egg day?

GLEANINGS ON THE WAY

"It's your eyeballs that need training, your eyeballs and whatever is connecting them to your hand."

Danny Gregory

SCRIBBLEYS

here's some scribbleys from this week. just playing with the kautzke style.

"KEEPING AT IT"

"Everybody's got five minutes."

HANSON'S BOXES

I was waiting in the car for Chris shopping at Hanson's grocery store.  There was a nifty pile of cardboard boxes piled in the snow.  I started by drawing the dark blue, stacked egg frames when a big van pulled right next to me and blocked the view entirely.  So I turned the other way and drew a roof with snow and icicles.  I got lost in the drawing of it, and when I turned back the van was gone.  So I finished up.

FF

GLEANINGS ON THE WAY

"Perspective is to painting what the bridle is to the horse, the rudder to the ship."  Leonardo da Vinci

Found by FF

Not eggs...air vents and mice

Here are some offerrings for this week. I will be working on eggs next.

sorry about the air vent picture...it got turned on its side.

GLEANINGS ON THE WAY

“You have to produce a hundred pieces of junk before you can start producing something that approaches art.”  Sven Geier 

Found by EV

GLEANINGS ON THE WAY

"The wonderful becomes familiar and the familiar wonderful."  (about artistic looking)  Edward R. Tufte

Found by FF

THE BADNESS

This is the really really badness.  Close your eyes.  But, look--no erasing!!

EV

STUDY SERIES

I have often drawn a picture of something, been disatisfied with it, and went on to draw something else.  Then I started doing a series of sketches of the same thing, looking for what makes it distinct.  The first drawing is rather general, then I begin making notes on observations.  The latter drawings improve with knowledge.  One of my teachers said, "You don't really know a thing until you have drawn it."  Yes, and I would add, ". . . several times.

FF

The old legend: The shell is pierced with the 5 wounds of Jesus. On the front is an Easter Lily. In the center is the star of the Magi. On the back is a poinsettia. If you break it there are 5 small "white doves" inside.

CEILING CORNER

It's back!

MF

"KEEPING AT IT" CHALLENGE #2

For anyone interested--and it's your creative call to be or not to be--this week's challenge is to draw an egg.  Do at least three drawings, post at least one.  Let's all--whoever is participating--post our eggs on Saturday, so they are arranged all in the same pot.

FF

CEILING CORNER

OK, guys, you win.  Here's my "ceiling coner."  I have to add that it was 8 degrees in the garage, I was interrupted by the phone, and then it got dark.  So no visor.

I must say this was an interesting challenge.  After having tried my own and finding out that this was not a snap, I must congratulate you guys on yours!  

FF

Some others from this week.

PERSPECTIVE PRAX: "Y"

I found this "simple excersize" to be surprizingly difficult.  Dustin, you're absolutely right about moving  your head--it skews everything.  After several failed attempts I made a little Perspective Analyzer--"Rene's Y."  it's a simple diagram of the desired Cartesian three-angle intersect.  Even that was hard to nail.  I used a Postit and held it up at arm's length to check accuracy.  I'd usually get one of the ceiling angles right, but then the other would be off.  

If you stand in the center of a room and look at a corner, there will be a two-point perspective.  If you stand very near one wall, the corner will have a one-point perspective.

The bigger outside corners of buildings don't move much the way the near ceiling corners seem to.  But this is important stuff.  We live in a grid-world where all the horizontal lines come crashing to the floor.  Or at least to eye-level.  Or else bend up to it.  Amazing.  Parthenon tweakage secrets.  And we're locked into this world of descending grids.  Hopping up and down makes it all jump, but dosn't free you from it.  That's why drawings won't look right without some checking, at least, of the perspective angles.

FF

PERSPECTIVE PRAX 1

The picture on the ledge was actually leaning slilghtly against the wall, but the door ajar added a different angle that blew me quite away.  

PERSPECTIVE PRAX -2

This one  had some of the lower right-left lines actually leveling a bit toward horizontal.  Or should have--the shelf lines should be slightly less angled than the top of the bookcase, which is slightly less angled than the ceiling.

In one of the portrait resources i was reading or watching (youtube rocks!!) the instructer talked about finding the angles in the face, and then steching the shapes into those angled lines. I tried it very quickly on a profile picture i found. I was fairly happy with how the technique worked. I found it was easier to keep things in proportion. The guy is a Hawaiian (sp?)- BJ Penn, a top UFC fighter.

My Perspective on perspective

The top picture was sketched quickly from the inside of my van. Not happy with it. But i want to share it all, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The picture on the bottom right is the doorway to my office in the basement of St. Luke's. I found it was hard to "flatten out" the lines that weren't in my "focal point." It was hard to draw the peripheral images, because once you turn your head, or move your eyes off the focal point, the perspective changes. Also depth perception messed me up alot. I had to do a lot of one eye sketching.

The picture on the bottom left is the dentist waiting room- i sketched it right before my teeth and periadontal tissue were violently assulted with blunt and sharp objects.

"KEEPING AT IT" CHALLENGE 1: Practicing Perspective

Hi Guys,

In the interest of drawing something--anything--daily, I present a challenge. A simple assignment for us all. Post at least one result by Saturday. Do not take over 5 minutes for this sketch. Make it a warm-up excercise. Practice "quitting before you are done."

The Challenge: "Practicing Perspective." Draw a corner of a ceiling. Don't just do the Cartesian Tri-axial Coordinate, although that will be there. Try to find a corner with some interest--a door nearby, or window, shelf, or picture on a wall. Keep it fairly simple and not too complicated. This can be more difficult and take more careful observation than it might seem. Limit your sketch to about the top half of the wall. Pay attention to how lower horizontal lines start to flatten out as they go down to the horizon (eye level).  Begin with the verticle of the corner. Let that be your anchor. Keep all verticles at 90 degrees. Pay special attention to the horizontal lines, what angles they are. Notice the parallels. Keep all the same ones going the same way. The only trick, but easy enough to forget. This kind of "interior architectural still life" is valuable training for those big exterior architectural stills that make up a cityscape.

FF

Yesterday's Disasters

Here is a picture I almost tore out of my book.  I was so unhappy with it.  It started out as a pencil drawing, then I added markers.  I have only one flesh tone, so I used a yellow and a gray for shadows.  I ruined it about four times, and got the paper so soggy I thought it would drip.  I left it in disgust.  But the next morning it seemed a  better sketch.  Healed of its glaring faults, somehow.

Save  your stuff and look at them another day.

FF

Contours

Ever since I tried "Blind Contour Drawing" (Tracing the outline of a thing with your eye and pencil, but not looking at your paper), I've been taken with simple contours.  The blind drawings were disjointed miseries.  Partly Blind Contour Drawing--peeking every once in a while--works better.  And is a super trainer of the perception when it is a "Good-eyed Drawing."

Here's a simple face.  (It took me a while to dare faces in this direct way, and another while to get one that wasn't from Outer Limits.)  This is a pic of a woman in a winter coat and scarf.  On the original--an add for the coat--her nose and face were about the same tone.  So I left her nose out.

FF

Keeping At It

I like to warm up with three quick sketches just to get the creative juices flowing.  Lots of times one of those quick warm-up is all I get to do for that day.  But even something as simple as that is a way of "keeping at it."  

I prefer to warm up with contour drawings that have no erasures and no "pentimenti."  Just follow the perimeter as best I can with a single line.  It's good fun, and I have found it to be a marvelous training for the eye-hand connector.

Here's one of my warm-ups.  A plastic milk bottle.  In the right light the thing has Monet colors.  I want to paint one.

FF

Here's a second one, perhaps a better representation of my skill.

I snapped these with the d-cam - I didn't get a chance to set up Dustin's scanner yet. But I will. I did discover right around this point that you can't put two drawings on facing pages in your notebook. They end up swapping graphites.

I call this "Beginner's Luck".  Meaning, this is as good as it gets.

-mf

These are all the quick sketches i've done so for. I learned the most from sketching the mp3 player. At first i didn't realize what grabbed my attention, but as soon as i started sketching I realized what it was. It was all the shades of blacks that caught my eye, and i like the snake like composition to it. I realized this because i became increasinfly frustrated with my sketch becuase i couldn't capture what attracted me to draw this in the first place.

DY sketches

This is my office desk. It is a rather quick sketch, but i liked the composition. It would make a great painting because of the glossy black caps on the markers and the reflections on the pop can.