Portrait Practice #5

I thought it would be a good challenge to participate in Ahmed Aldoori's 50 heads challenge. I plan to do 100 ultimately. I want to improve my proficiency in the placement of facial features. And use it as painting practice as well. I plan to paint one head a day after (non art)work. I've been reviewing Hampton's notes on heads. I think reviewing Loomis and the Reilly method, watching Proko vids on the head  are worth doing. Here is what I've done so far. Ahmed's pinterest board is where I got a lot of these heads to paint.

I felt like moderndayjames' challenges helped a lot even if mentally. Doing 100 studies felt like a good achievement and felt like I might have been making progress.

I have been having difficulty finding illustration work this month but I'll keep on trying.

Figure Drawing 17: Feet

Very late but here are 100 feet for moderndayjames' 100 hands and feet challenge. 

Figure Drawing 16: Hands Study

Hands for moderndayjames' biweekly art challenge on youtube. There was also a 100 feet study I failed to finish.

I also took some hand notes from proko under the cut.

Virtual Plein Air #2

I've been doing virtual plein air via google maps daily recently. Here are some processes. I've been listening to Nathan Fowkes' schoolism course on composition while doing them. Hopefully my compositions will get better and I'll be able to make more interesting pictures. For all of these I have been focusing on the island of Santorini in Greece. Perhaps I should move on to another location but there are a lot of good places to draw there.

Portrait Practice #4

I've been trying to do one portrait a day while listening to Watts videos and also going over the Reilly Method which is neat. I like the rhythms it uses. Learning different methods of drawing the head I think is useful. I've looked at Proko's method (which is very Loomis+reilly based) and also Hampton's head. They're all very similar but seeing it explained by different people and different ways is slowly cementing the knowledge over the years in my brain.

 Above are from photos. Below is from imagination. I still have difficulties with proportion and getting through the lay in stage.

Heard of Nicolai Fechin through Watts videos and his work is very compelling.

1. Pictorial Composition. Nathan Fowkes

I will update this as I work more on the assignments.

Virtual Plein Air

I joined a Jeremy Fenske stream out of curiosity and it was very pleasant. Everyone was encouraged to search google maps for a streetview to paint somewhere in Greece. It was my first time doing virtual plein air and it was nice doing something with others. The location is here.

I did a composition exploration before committing. And then a simple breakdown of colors. It was difficult. I changed the composition again a few times as I was painting.

Figure Drawing #15: The upper Leg Muscles

UPPER MUSCLES OF UPPER LEG

Did the above more recently

One can think of these muscles as comparable to the deltoid heads of the arm. Not sure if that is an accurate way to see it as.

MUSCLES OF LOWER PART OF UPPER LEG

I neglected to post these pages from a long time ago.

Mid February Dump

Been doing more black and white work lately. Used to not be able to get interested in compositions if it wasn't in color so I'm glad I'm finding that b/w stuff is interesting to me now. Though I guess my color stuff might stagnate as a result. Who knows. I've also been drawing angels/winged beings for fun while learning how bird wings work. Boy I love the shapes of wings.

Still have a lot of issues with drawing faces and bodies. Will try to continue looking into that. It's just that I've been taking a lot of freelance and have been finding it hard to balance studying with work. I guess I just gotta make studying more fun and easier to approach.

Figure Drawing #14: Supination and Pronation

Have not been too well but here's some stuff. Art is one thing keeping my sanity these days but it feels very hard concentrating. For me art requires a great deal of focus that I have in less amounts these days. 

Supination and pronation are odd but I feel that I'm slowly getting the hang of it. Well we'll see.

Figure Drawing #13: Some studies

Some stuff from this month. Below are from imagination.

Below are from photos.

I should do more ladies haha and non muscular bodies. Eventually...eventually... After I get down muscle placement.

Figure Drawing #12: Muscles of the Lower Arm

These are some very confusing muscles. There are a lot of them so it's best to simplify them in to general forms as detailed in Hampton's book.

I've been sitting on these for a while but well I'll just post them already.

Figure Drawing #11: The Muscles of the Upper Arm

 Here are some things I copied from Anatomy for Sculptors. I felt I needed to consult it since Hampton's Figure Drawing book doesn't go in depth with origins and insertions of the arm muscles. The section on arms is kind of a quick overview compared to how Hampton walked you through each muscle in the torso section. I wish it was more in depth but maybe that means origins/insertions doesn't matter too much. (I think they do though) It also shows that having an anatomy atlas as supplement to a figure drawing book is useful if you want more detail.

The arm is one of those things that's better to imagine it as boxes to arrange all the muscles in their correct places. It's pretty confusing.

Figure Drawing #10.34585464: Crazy

Have been without internet for a while but I'm back. Haha the thing about internet is that it helps me stay motivated even I go on for an hour a day. Without it I feel less inspired to work which is ...an interesting thing to find out about myself. There are other things that have gotten in the way as well that demotivated me with drawing the last week but it's ok. I just gotta keep trucking. I did draw a lot, sometimes five pages a day of bad doodles. Not many were any good. I still have a lot of aspects that mystify me regarding art. I have to push through and figure them out.

I have to start taking on more art responsibilities and get back into the habit of making more finished work...

I'll try to resume looking at muscles independently in my posts.