Life Drawing

I started going to a drop-in life drawing studio about a month ago. It has been one of the best things I’ve ever decided to do. If you are into drawing or comics or art or meditation, I am going to evangelize yo’ shit right now about going to life drawing. Go find a class if you like or a book if that’s your style or a video on YouTube, and then go find an open studio in your area.  What I like so much about going to life drawing: it’s 3 hours of my week where I get to concentrate on one thing. I put my headphones in, I get out my pencil and I work on drawing what I’m seeing.

You can see some of the notes I take for myself. I’m practicing something an instructor talked about a couple years ago, I don’t remember his exact words, but it was something like, “it’s not fucking precious.”  In my mind, it’s something along the lines of “it’s just a drawing, it’s just practice, stop treating it like a fragile thing that you’ll never do again.”

‘It’s not fucking precious’ also applies to trying new things. This is brush marker over a quick sketch done in non-photo blue pencil. It’s not technically the best thing I’ve ever scratched out but I like it, I tried something new. So mark that as an accomplishment.

 

90 charcoal gesture

90 sec charcoal gesture

90 sec charcoal gesture

Diamonds!

Here’s something I found in the street while out on a coffee break. I haven’t done a TIFITS post in a while. Mostly cause I haven’t been finding anything good!

This was a particularly challenging one, that I originally wasn’t going to show y’all but when I came back to it, I realized I kind of like that this is a totally fucked up drawing that looks nothing like the thing IRL. It’s a small faceted pear-shaped bead made out of black glass or polished obsidian.

Nail Polish

I’m coming off of a bit of a nail polish bender recently, I think I’ve bought at least 5 bottles in the last month. I also found a cheap gouache set at Marshall’s of all places (while looking for more nail polish, natch) so I’ve been playing around with that a little bit.  Painting on brown paper bags is so nice and super low pressure.  There’s no anxiety that always comes with starting a new sketchbook or working on that first piece of watercolor paper that you just spent $5 on.

Carl Sagan

Howdy!

I’m back for another round of shotgun posting before I disappear yet again into a whirlwind of procrastination. I’ve been studying a bit of everything drawing related recently; I went to life-drawing for the first time in nearly two years last week, and I’ve been reading and watching a ton of stuff about comics and graphic novels. So will I be posting a 5 panel story tonight? Nyet! Just some brush pen practice that I did tonight while watching The Cosmos.

 

 

I’m slowly transition to doing some work in photoshop. Coloring and eventually sketching. It’s going better than expected. But I’ll still always prefer working on paper.

Doodle Assortment

 

 

Pink People

 

 

 

Can you guess who this is??

 

Crackling TV Fireplace

Word of the Day

 

Intermerate: inviolate; undefiled; unsullied; pure

Feet Study

Skiing

I went skiing in Vancouver, B.C., Canada last weekend. I got through the first day and decided not to press my luck on the second day. I wandered around Whistler Village and sketched for a while instead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was nice to be around snow again. And that’s something I never thought I would say.

Cold Feet

 

 

A Comic per Hour day was fun, though I couldn’t keep up after lunch. I will be prepared and prepped for it next year though. In the meantime, I’ve been having trouble with cold feet and bad circulation, if you’ve never heard of chilblains it’s because you don’t live in Dickensian England (I also heard a character talk about it on the PBS show Call the Midwife.) I google’d diagnosed myself a few weeks ago (bad idea, I know) but so far I seem to be right. So now I have to wear socks all the time and I hate socks. So now you know that about me.

Hourly Comics Day

I’m a little late with this – 9-10am

10 – 11

11-12