64 Arts

Seize the Scribble!

64 Arts

That’s right folks–you don’t think you can draw? Have I got an experiment for you! Meet the Gesture Drawing:

Gesture Drawings

In figure drawing class (the files of which I went and dug through tonight so I could have something to show you) we would start every day with a series of short scribbles. The model would hold a pose for up to 60 seconds (sometimes as little as 30) and we’d have to capture as much of the pose as we could in that time.

The idea is you put your pencil, crayon, charcoal, whatever down on the paper and scribble like mad to describe the shape and weight of the object in front of you; ideally without raising your pencil.

At first I wasn’t very good at it–I have a lot of unfinished gesture drawings and blobby squiggles. Eventually, though, I got more adept at describing what I saw, learned to fill the space and then go back to add weight to the edges and to trace the spine and limbs to get the most movement out of the fewest possible seconds. Then I started using charcoal or conte crayons for value gesture drawings (value being the relative dark or light qualities between the pencil strokes) and I got even faster because I could rough out the shape of the figure quicker, and spend more precious seconds adding definition.

Another trick (though that makes it sound like a cheat, and it’s not) is to think about the general joint and muscle structure of the body: the head is an oval, the neck a cylinder, the shoulder circles with narrow ovals for upper arms, little circles for elbows, and so forth. This still comes in handy (majorly!) when I’m trying to figure out a pose for my comics.

While you can practice gesture drawing from still photographs, live models really are better. My teacher suggested going to a park or playground and drawing children at play. If you feel a little odd about doing that and otherwise lack a model to pose for you (and, yes, it IS easier to draw nudes that clothed people–clothing obscures lines and confuses the eye-mind understanding of what we know is there), pop in a DVD and hit pause on an interesting pose. Yoga or pilates DVDs would be great for this. (And, hey, it’s not like they’re getting used otherwise, right?)

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And now for my Daily Doodle.  (Still time to share yours, hint HINT! lol)

So this one came out of nowhere. I was really stumped about what to draw but I knew I needed to do something. I had colored in a stamped image the other night that had a fairy and butterflies and stuff, just fooling around with my colored pencils (okay, procrastinating working on the comic) so I was thinking flowers. Then I thought of that Dali-Disney collaboration (Destino) and the female with the bell-shaped dress (about 2:30 in) and that’s where this came from. I couldn’t decide if it looked more like a Tulip-themed cotillion gown (with little wheels under the tips of the framed skirt petals so that the shape would not be compromised as she walked) or a Dr Seuss Wedding Dress 🙂 THEN (see the way this happens?) I realized it would be perfect for another project I have on the back-burner, and this drawing will get used again. Yay!

Suit Your Surface

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There are more things to draw on than just paper…

Let’s see how many things I can come up with that are suitable for drawing on that are not paper:

  • Sidewalks (make your own sidewalk chalk!I bet those water bottle ice-cube trays would be perfect molds for them!)
  • Chalkboards
  • Whiteboards
  • Walls (if you have permission of the wall-owner, of course)
  • Nails (as in finger nails–I’ve always been curious about those polish markers for this sort of thing)
  • Silk (veering into painting a bit, but I think it’s an understandable deviation)
  • Appliances*
  • Cakes

Yup, I was totally leading up to that last one 🙂 I used to do a LOT of cake decorating. I was mostly self-taught, then I took the Wilton classes so I could teach others. I could put anything on a cake, as long as I had a picture to go by. One cake in particular decided to test those skills:

1999 Camp Gordon Johnston Assn Fundraiser

This group used an old WWII cartoon by Bill Mauldin on their brochures and wanted it duplicated onto a cake.

This was a bit before the edible images were very widespread so there wasn’t much to do but draw it on.

I was able to transfer the primary lines using piping gel transfer and a piece of transparency film, then filled in the rest with a very tiny tip (a 1 and a 0, if I remember correctly) and black icing. It took hours, but the CGJA loved it!

What other surfaces do you want to draw on? And what types of preparation would you have to make to do it?

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And, now, for the Daily Doodle! Again, I had a couple because it was my night to do my weekly life-comic. If you’d like to see the larger size of the left side of the image, click on over to Cocktail Hour and see how my studio got it’s name. The ones on the right are honest doodles, though.

The top right is a visual pun: Spur of the Moment. I was just thinking how this little exercise was just that–and into my head this image popped. Nice when the muse plays along, right? (My muse’s name is Tessa, by the way–but that’s a whole ‘nother story.) The bottom right, however, was inspired by the  Search for the Missing Cookies over at A Duck in Her Pond. The actual line she wrote was

And we all know a pig without Oreos is not a happy pig.

All I could think about was a sad little piggie (wearing pearls, of course!) shaking an empty box of cookies and looking terribly forlorn. I know we feel very sad when we run out of cookies, here!

Still plenty of time to share your doodles and be entered in the drawing for the handmade journal. Each link gets you an entry 🙂

Cool Tools

64 Arts

So, what do you use when you draw?

Contrary to some thoughts on the matter, you can create some awesome art with very simple tools. We’re talking crayons and copy paper. For real. And even if you’re not into creating the next Mona Lisa, the point is to loosen up and have some fun while being creative which is why I wholly support the simple joys of a coloring book!

Of course, it wouldn’t quite work for what I’m trying to do with my comics to use crayons (more’s the pity some days) so, for the curious, here’s what I use

  • Strathmore Bristol, Smooth–a very nice sheet of heavy paper with a smooth surface that accepts pencil, ink and brushes with equal ease
  • Mars Technico Pencil Lead holder and Staedler 2H leads–this is a fairly hard lead so it makes fairly light lines on the paper, perfect for inking over and dropping out the pencils in Photoshop without having to spend time erasing (which sometimes rubs off the ink, as well–not good!)
  • Zig Writer Pens in black–yes, the scrapbooking pens! I love the larger barrel compared to those skinny-minny Microns (which, yes, I also use for one of the comics) and the plastic nib puts up with a little more abuse that felt tips or brush tips
  • Occasionally I’ll also use India ink and some small brushes to ink instead.
  • Canson 7×10 spiral-bound sketchbook–nice creamy paper with a good tooth that accepts pencils and pens easily, plus it’s small enough to fit in most of my purses without need to draw micro-small
  • Crayola (yes, really) colored pencils for loose sketching and Prismacolor colored pencils for more detailed work–the latter are a bit of a splurge and I still wonder if I’m putting them to their best use
  • General’s Charcoal pencils–so fun to get big thick lines and shading, if a bit messy
  • Photoshop CS4 for the occasional digital color job (really want to get more proficient here!)

Of course, I write all this and realize that I’ve haven’t played with my coloring books lately. Maybe I’ll be able to fit some in tomorrow now that I’m thinking about them again (and just rearranged the bookcase they are stored on).

Now, looking at this list it seems a bit long–I don’t use every tool every day. Usually it’s just one or two at a time, but they’ve all been used in the last month. The point is, each has it’s own uses and it’s up to me to know when and where to employ each tool. It’s not always about having the best tool for the job (as in most expensive, most popular or most hyped) but having the right tool for each. And it’s not just limited to art supplies 🙂

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Daily Doodles 3.1.2010

Here’s my doodles for Monday, the 1st. I was a busy doodler last night but 2 of the items aren’t really doodles–the Short Ogre Cook (top right) is actually an inked piece getting ready to be digi-colored for a wallpaper design for the cookbook project and the food icons on the bottom right are for the same project, just a different application. Still, they were all worked on tonight so I decided to collage them in with the real doodle.

That, of course, is my tablescape on the left. Now, this is just a quickie sketch I did of what happened to be in front of me. The lampshade was a little skewed and I exaggerated it in the sketch.

Even though this was not a staged still life (the candles are usually on the entry table but were moved to make way for wedding shower door prizes, the same shower with a beach theme that yeilded the shells and sea glass that are clustered on cheesecloth at the base of the lamp) there are some good bones here for a future study. There are 5 elements–odd numbers are always good! It’s asymetrical, another plus, and the lamp leads the eye down to the candles and the cluster at the bottom which adds movement.

Granted, doodles are like brainstorming: no editing allowed! Show me yours!

Back to the Drawing Board!

64 Arts

Okay, folks, we’re starting on the next of the 64 Arts and it’s drawing! Something I do a fair amount of every week for my comics but also just in general. Are you a doodler? Do you carry a sketch book around with you?

I’m actually bad about sketching for the sake of sketching–usually I try to make every drawing I do count towards a finished piece. After all, with 2 webcomics that updated (up until recently) a total of 5 times a week, there wasn’t much of an opportunity for idle doodles. I’ve cut back some of my update schedule but more because I’ve got more projects to spread myself around on but I’m also trying to doodle more, too. As such, I’m keeping a medium-sized sketch book in my purse for any sort of random inspiration that might strike.

I think this week might be good for some projects, don’t you? This week’s challenge is to draw something every day. Whether it’s a self-portrait, a tree, a flower or something entirely from your imagination, get out your pencils, pens, crayons, markers, chalks or whatever else you want to play with and draw something every day.

Want to play along? Post in the comments a link to your drawing a day (I’ll post mine here) and I’ll put everyone’s name in a hat at the end of the week and give away a hand-bound notebook that you can use for a journal, sketchbook or whatever you want to do with it!

Ready? Set? Draw!

Loosen Up and Laugh

64 Arts

“Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.”
~William James

Doesn’t that just paint the neatest picture?

When I was growing up, Mom claimed that while I had a genius-level IQ (140-something, for what it’s worth) I had absolutely no common sense. Granted, this was during the teenage years when mothers and daughter are notorious for not seeing eye to eye. I wonder, then, if I was really as clueless as I seemed to her, or if our respective common senses were just moving at different speeds?

If the opening quote is to be taken as true, then my common sense spends a lot of time dancing.

Common sense (aside from sometimes not being all that common), is kind of boring. Of course, it comes in handy every day. Every little decision we make takes common sense into consideration. It’s sort of like breathing or walking, that way: we have to do it, so let’s get on with it, already.

Meanwhile, our sense of humor likes to look at things differently, it says, if we have to get from here to there, why walk when we can skip or, better yet, electric slide our way over? (Yes, I went there, you know you want to… go on, it won’t hurt anything).

Dancing in general makes us laugh. I mean, what’s funnier than catching sight of yourself (or someone else, even better) gyrating to a song in a mirror or passing window? If it doesn’t make you at least grin, maybe it’s because you wish you could be that free?

Do some dancing today, mentally and physically, and laugh–not at yourself, but with yourself. I will if you will!