Tag Archives: figure

Feeling like a slug!

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Me standing on a block behind my tall daughter in her prom dress
Me and Girl2 on prom night

First, check out Girl2 in her prom dress. This picture was taken on her very last day of high school! She will graduate cum laude, with a cosmetology degree, an associates degree in science and math, and VERY close to completing Eagle Scout. I can’t manage to change my socks daily. This is why, as happy as I am for her and as proud, I feel like a slug.

I  had all of these great plans for 2023. I was going to do a fair every month. I was going to complete a large painting every week, a couple of small paintings, and sketch every day.

With the exception of a couple of small watercolors, I haven’t managed to complete a single painting. I have done a small handful of sketches, but nothing near the volume I wanted to do.

So what’s wrong me? Why can’t I manage to follow through? It’s so easy to get down on myself and think about how terrible I am. But doing nothing is the norm. That is the standard that the human body wants to maintain. Inertia. A body at rest will remain at rest until acted upon by a force, right?

So the real question is what happened before that motivated me to do something? How did I manage to get up and do anything before? We typically throw around words like “discipline” and “plan” without really understanding how those words become actions.

I don’t have an answer to that. I know that routine is the best way for me to get things accomplished. If I manage to sit at a drawing table with my pens and paper, I will draw something. So I have to set the routine to have my pens and paper out, maybe at a specific time or at least convenient place every day. Like the saying goes, “Chance favors the prepared mind.” If my space is prepared and my materials available, it’s a whole lot easier for me to actually sit down and get some work done. The current state of the studio is not conducive to that effort, to say the least

Garage studio is trashed

I did manage to take some supplies with me to the mall while the wife and kids explored the shops. I didn’t get a whole lot of sketches in, but something is a brazillian times more than nothing, right?

Boy2 enjoying some Chinese food at the food court

Limiting Facebook and IG

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Pinup Practice

It has been a while since I’ve updated my website. Like so many others, I began using Facebook and Instagram to reach a wider audience. However, those platforms are zeroing in on creators and people with differing opinions. Discord updated their terms of service to say they could deplatform you for something you did while NOT on their platform. Imagine getting into an argument with someone and then trying to take a bus home, and the bus company won’t let you ride because they agreed with the person you were arguing with. It makes no sense.

Worse, they are closing in on risqué creators. If your art skills are good enough, the bots tag you. Once they start tagging you, the “punishments” compound, even if you get a previous violation overturned. One could probably argue that getting the previous violation overturned simply made them more intent on bringing you down.

With all that in mind, I’ll be doing what I should have been doing all along. I will publish on my website and share from there and through my newsletter. At least until my domain host and mail server decide to censor us too.

The Classroom 21FEB2012

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composition rule breaking

This week I discuss the process I go through when planning a painting composition. I touch on the golden mean, then quickly reduced it to the rule of thirds. I talk about cropping out uneccesary stuff and then how to break the rules for emphasis.

Click Here to watch the recording of the class.

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The Classroom 14FEB2012

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Negative Spaces

This week in the classroom we talked about negative spaces.  Negative space the area not occupied by your subject.  You try to only see the shape made by where your subject isn’t.  Dede (@inkiwell) aptly described it as drawing the air around you subject.  This is not to be confused with a silhouette. A silhouette is the outer perimeter of your subject drawn as a shape.  If you cut the silhouette out, you will be left with the negative space.  This is a handy tool to help understand better some part of your subject that might be confusing to the eye.  For instance, if you are having difficulty with the perspective of the rails of a bar stool, focusing on the negative space will trick your eye into seeing what’s going on.

Click Here to watch the recording of the class.

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The Classroom 07FEB2012

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This week in the classroom we talked about foreshortening.  Foreshortening is a perspective tool where you show closer shapes of an object overlapping shapes that are further away.  For instance, in the foot drawing above, the toes are bigger and bolder than the arch of the foot. The arch is bigger and bolder than the ankle and calf. That foot is bigger and darker than the foot on the right, giving the illusion of one foot in front of the other.  @EvelineTimeless  accurately pointed out in the chat that it looks like these feet are actually walking towards you.

We spent about twenty minutes going over the basics of single point and multi-point perspective and then another thirty minutes discussing how that applies to the figure.  Interestingly enough, while foreshortening applies to any kind of overlapping and atmospheric perspective, I rarely find  the term used in other than life drawings.

Click Here to watch the recording of the class.

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