Return To The Boxed Face

Well, after taking a short break from faces, I found myself longing to go back to them. I'm a perfectionist, so if I don't have something done to my standards, I'm never sastisfied. A blessing and a curse in disguise, no? Anyway, I went back to faces and I need to practice getting back into "linear thinking mode". I'm trying to go back to boxes in life drawing, too, and that didn't end too too badly.

Bobby Chiu, Gavin, Kei, and T decided to come to an X-life session as Seneca so I'm thankful that they were there to help me out a bit. I'll post some life drawing when I have time and it's not 3:30am. <3

How Can Anyone Not Like Feet? - X-Life Studies

Okay gang, these were some studies I was doing at X-life recently. I think this was around the week of June 17th (it's good to date your sketches so that you can see how fast you're improving or what you need to change to improve faster)
and I have to say, studying body parts is really pretty fun. I always was pretty fascinated with National Geographics or the Discovery channel whenever they had science related to the human body.

I guess it's just natural that my curiosity with the human body carrys over to art. In any case, I enjoyed studying feet and arms and hopefully I can carry my fascination and enthusiasm for it to other parts of the body.

There is much to work on, but what Jackie X-life is complete without a contour of some sort. Body contour down for the count and I definitely enjoyed filling a page of feet. The idea came from my friend Andrew's (See Links) blog where he put up all his talented life drawing sketches.

Get Those Brain Juices Flowing!

These sketches were done during the time my friend Nate (See Links) and I were sketching at Yorkdale. I had heard that Jose (See Links) and him would do concepts, and since I wanted to get away from drawing some heads, I thought, heck why don't we just do some concepts back and forth. And so we did.

1st - Night Cavern Carnivore

2nd - We had the basic shape of some benches and a plant that was situated where Nate and I were sitting, so we made a character out of that. Mine is some tree, venus trap thingy. Maybe I'll add more to it later.

3rd - Old Hispanic Janitor, I tried my best :S

4th - Nate's concept idea was Humanoid Canine Warrior. I made mine a St. Bernard Brawler. I was surprised that the wristband and collar on the dog fit nicely for the title of a brawler and added a nice effect that it was a dog.

Two Heads Are Better Than One...Or In This Case...A Gajillion

I was lucky enough to attend a Bobby Sketch Group again thanks to Future Shop giving me a Sunday off, and I'm happy to say I think I'm on the right track with trying to understand linear structure. Bobby was kind enough to quell any fears I had about diving into a new technique. I'm glad that I got my friends to go, too. It makes the experience all the more enriching. Oh! I found myself in an unlikely place in the newspaper. My name is not mentioned, but I'm definitely there. Check it out Mom! (http://www.imaginismstudios.com/journalism.html)

"Around Islington station, now headed eastbound, Mr. Chiu has his sketchbook out, showing a young woman here on her first time an example. "You have a jaw line here . . . and you continue to build." Mr. Chiu says, guiding his pencil over the page. "Lines can be drawn plain and simple . . . or in all sorts of ways."

HA ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! It's good to be a Fundie.

Ps: The first few sketches were done at Yorkdale mall with my friend Nate and as well, on the subway. The drawing with the two people wrapping their arms around each other were too cute to pass up. The markered drawing is by Bobby's touch. He corrected my structure and now I have to focus on accuracy.

Speaking Of Drawing...Contour Excercises Are Back

Well, I was just reading some lessons from Bert Dodson's Keys To Drawing book, and I decided to do the recommended exercises for kicks. It starts off with blind contour, and since I haven't done that in a while, I thought I'd give it a go. To my delight and surprise, I drew some pretty decent blind contours of my hand. It used to be awful, but I think because of Fundies, I'm doing alright. Hopefully, you guys can critique this and see how it goes. I'm still studying from the book, and it's pretty fun. I highly recommend the book to people wanting to draw like a draftsman.

You Put Your Whole Head In, You Put Your Whole Head Out...

Heads. How I loathe them, but then one day, after I woke up at a friend's house. I decided to just draw heads and work on structure. I spent 2 hrs trying to figure out the skull and I think I learned something in the drawing I posted first, even though the heads before that came first. It's funny to see the small transitions and thinking processes when I told myself to draw a bigger box so I could see the head better, and it worked! I'm starting to understand strucutre a little better, I just hope I can stray away from the general skull onto more caricaturing now.

Drunk Quirky Art? Hey, That's Alright In My Book

Well, these couple of drawings were done at a friend's party when I was a little wee bit, um, intoxicated. Anyways, I remember asking my friends to just give me character concepts and then I went and did the best I could on them. Luckily for me, my friends have a sense of humour, I doubt my pictures would turn out funny (not only because they were drawn terribly) but because they just have a great sense of humour. I find it builds my curiosity and creativity. What do you think? Lawyer Hippo, Tiki God, Gnome, Dolphin caught in a bear trap, and a Chicken with cow udders. Now if that's not sick, I don't know what is. I had a fun time with this though. Makes me wonder how far I can go with characters.

Hey, You Got Some Sexy Legs There...Mind If I Draw Them?

X-Life Drawing legs. Always fun and challenging.

Focus! Concentrate! Think Structurally!

Well, I went back to Bobby's Boxes (heheh I think I coined a term, anyways) and I've steadily noticed a slight improvement in heads. I'm still trying to figure out caricaturing because that is so difficult to achieve. It's mind wracking. How do you begin to learn how to make things look right, then go off to distort it so it ALSO looks right.

My body feels like it's going to fall apart, but my mind burns to go on. I'm feeling wicked guys, pure wicked awesome. It seems after drawing a lot, my ambition, dedication and inspiration has come back to burn with a fiery passion. I'm motivated to draw more which is great.

I do have to thank Future Shop though for providing my motivation to draw. It's been....interesting...working there without thinking of art at all. It just shows me how badly I miss it when I come home and draw on the subway or go to x-life after working 8 hrs a day.

I noticed that on one of the model's knees, her knee cap area looked like a face after I had drawn it. It was odd how I was drawing faces then after studying her knee, it looked like a face. Cute coincidence. I also repeated the scribble-creatively excericise and came up with two unlikely creations. It was a lot of fun though and a very different approach to how I think. I also did a small study of how Bobby Chiu does profile faces.

Mr. Conte, I love you. More posts to come!