Happy Halloween

I always found the headless horseman terrifying. He throws his flaming pumpkin head at you doesn't he? I mean... a person could get seriously hurt like that. And then he rides off into the night like a badass. Definitely a villain's villain. That's for sure..

On the bus..

Going over the GW bridge, for a moment you can see a brilliant sparkling glimpse of the NYC skyline. The magic has clearly worn off for this seasoned NYer..Need to stop by Blick all of  my supplies are running out at once. But I also think there's something good about being forced to improvise and leave your comfort zone when the pen you normally reach for runs out. I started drawing with these calligraphy pens I found lying around house and its actually kind of silly/fun.

A very modest start

Bear with me as I cautiously venture outside of my comfort zone. As part of my efforts to begin working in color, here is a quick still life I did using this cheapo watercolor set I bought at dick blick (pictured below). I like watercolor and gouache because the cleanup is a snap, and theres no toxins to inhale, but just doing this little guy made me realize I'm a bit short on resources. For one thing- I could use an actual palette (instead of just using the  back of the plastic case, lol), and of course, I could always use more brushes. Also, I think having an opaque water color set in a plastic dried out pan like this sort of defeats the purpose of opaque watercolor, because you have to moisten the color in order to get it to go on your brush. However, the water sort of cuts the saturation, so it can be a bit of an uphill battle to get really bright, saturated colors. It made we want to pick up a real set of gouache tubes in the future. All in all, I really like the end result of gouache. You can get really bright saturated images that are very quick and inexpensive to make. That and it reminds me of some of the classic disney animation backgrounds painted in the old days before computers and photoshop.

More Figures from Jack's Class

Each time I sit down to draw I'm totally humbled by how much there is to learn. Jack gave me some great comments this time. He told me to concentrate on the planes, and make sure that the shadow pattern is unified into one shape for the entire figure. Connect the bits and pieces of shadow into a whole.

Another late night sketch...

Figure Drawing Marker Sketches

I'm trying to get used to breaking down what I see into 3-4 values. I think seeing what I'm drawing in this way will help me when I begin painting, which is hopefully very soon.

James Dean Type Character

Playing around with gradient mapping in PS, thanks for the tip Nate!  Still not really sure how this is supposed to work but I'm sure in time I'll figure it out.

    

Free Life Drawing at the Alma Mater

SVA has a free workshop every wed night from 7-10pm. Awesome! Plus, I got to catch up with some friends and swap leads, which is always good.

A card for my friends...

Who just got engaged. This didn't turn out how I pictured it in my head. Course it didn't help that my markers were running out...Course that's no excuse for it not turning out how I wanted. Need more life drawing!