Figures...

I believe I mentioned at the beginning of the year, that I am doing some daily sketching. This past week, I have been doing 30 second-1 minute sketches of figures, from an app in my iPad called 'Random Poses.' The same figures are available on the internet at Posemaniacs.com.

I started by doing a gesture sketch (girl looking to see ,'do these jeans make me look fat?'), then a sketch from shapes (girl in stripe top), then a combined gesture/contour sketch (the male on that same page.) The next two sketches, below those three, were done from drawing the negative spaces (seated girl), and shading (outstretched arms male.)

The two overlapped figures at the upper right were pure contour (the larger running figure) and blind contour (where you don't look at the paper at all.) The final sketch was done with my non-dominant (left) hand. All of the above were done in ball point pen.


I then did a pencil sketch, which pretty much combined all of the previous techniques (the woman), then a watercolor sketch, which did not include any drawing at all.


All of this culminated in spending some time this weekend working on the figures on the maquette for the Nativity tapestry commission. The above figure will be on the left panel, and the one below will be on the right panel. Both are just beginnings, but doing the sketch work gave me the impetus to BEGIN, which is the hardest part for me sometimes.


So, YEA, ME! I have begun! Now I can start putting surrounding elements around the figures, and work on the borders and the background. Then I'll 'tweak' it all, and have it ready (hopefully by the end of the month, if not before) to present to the buyers for their input.