04 // Live Drawing

This weeks task was something I definitely do not do enough of, but will be doing a lot more of in future. It may not be the easiest thing to head out and do; it can be a bit nerve-racking, leaving the comfort zone and drawing in public - especially whilst being scrutinized by passers-by - but it's pretty beneficial in that people when out in public tend to make some odd poses that you might never consider using when figure drawing. Therefore the study of hoomans in their natural habit can yield some pretty nice results. Plus it's good practice, which is never a bad thing.

So the first port of call was the exterior of the University building, where a throng of people gathered, milled about, wandered etc, making this a good spot to warm up with a few sketches/scribbles.

My choice of medium for this installment was a black ink brush pen. My reasoning for this choice was that I figured having the option to easily produce thin and broad strokes with a single implement would allow me to produce more variety in my mark-making, thus enhancing my ability to get more details down on paper in half the time. While the brush pen was definitely effective in achieving this, the nature of the pen makes it very difficult to control skinny lines, particularly when outside and trying to work effectively at speed.

Here are my first few efforts, including a couple from the interior of the library rotunda area.

All in all, not a bad first effort, give or take a few silly mistakes, and poor representations of the subject matter. Despite this, I definitely learned a thing or two from the exercise.

Following on from some post-sketching analysis, I decided that the brush pen was my main problem; its a tool I'm not entirely comfortable with at the moment, having not really put enough practice into yet. From what I've gathered, it excels in producing measured strokes, when time is plentiful enough to spare on ensuring that each mark is controlled enough to produce the desired results. In this case though, it resulted in too many accidents for me. 

Considering which approach to take on my next endeavour, I returned to using my fave pens: a 01 fineliner for rough layout, form seperation and tonal work, followed by a slightly thicker fineliner for silhouette linework. Happy days!! The speed was increased exponentially just by using my two favourite pens! Without having fear of uncontrollable lines, I was able to get shapes down quicker and more confidently, producing far better results than before.

Fuelled by this new-found confidence - and having a comfy seat within Dundee train station - I was able to quickly get a few sketches out within 10 mins. There is definitely improvement within this second pass...

03 // Tone and Shade

With this weeks assignment being to study an object and present an accurate depiction of its tone and shade, I set about with ballpoint pen and invested some time into discovering how successful I might be in applying the medium to this task. As is likely to be a running theme for some of this module, I fear that to a degree I was unsuccessful in my first attempt, though have leveled up a little in the time since.

Here's a snap-shot of the 2 objects I chose to draw in class; the vase presenting lighter tones, and the crumpled cone presenting a darker range.

My first sketches looked thus...

After spending a bit of time considering my self-critique and berating myself for making schoolboy errors, I came back for more punishment and produced this...

...but who was I kidding?? If anything, this was even further off the mark, soooooo after a swift crash-course in the technicalities of cross hatching, I got my ass in gear and knuckled down to produce a better result - albeit slightly watered down in terms of details.

02 // Perspective Sketching Revengeance

After the last embarrassing post, I had to put pen to paper once more in a desperate bid to redeem myself. So here it is... still not perfect, but I'm getting warmed up now. 

Unfortunately I went a wee bit over the time limit, but that was due to my need to make the lines look nicer than the shambles I posted before.

Honestly, that first picture should be tied to a post and shot.

01 // Perspective Sketching

Here's my first perspective sketch for class assignment. I chose to present an interior, as I figured it would be a slightly easier method to ease myself back into this kind of thing. After completing the sketch, I feel as if I'm waaaaaaay out of practice!!

So I started by laying out all my guides as technically as I could with a cheap plastic ruler. Given the 90 min constraint of the task, time was definitely the main issue for me here, as I soon found myself running out of time to add objects and complete the finer details.

When it came to inking the linework, my freehand lines and pen control let me down horribly, resulting in an unfortunately messy finish.

So, to summarise, I'll be spending some serious time focusing on improving my draftsmanship in this area, which should hopefully increase my speed and efficiency. And then I'll make pretty pictures.