Ink and Wash Figures 2

     I should probably mention I'm enrolled in four upper-division writing courses this semester. Finding the time to draw is becoming difficult. Last semester I had lectures, now I have workshops. This week, I'll try to draw a page of figures a day.

     The first page was done with Pen & Ink India Black, which runs too much from the brush pens. Also, #2 (upper-left) taught me two lessons: First, cell shading realistic faces with three tones looks terrible. It's best to just leave the face a solid tone. Second, Copic Opaque White pigment is too thick to work with dip pens, and doesn't really work as a pigment in general. It turned slightly green over the ink. It's pretty safe to assume there is no such thing as an opaque white ink.

     The second page was done with Rohrer & Klinger Sepia ink. There's a noticeable improvement I think is owed to the finer nib of this Pilot Penmanship fountain pen. I tried diluting the ink 75%, and it simply wouldn't flow from the brush pen. So I decided to dump it in a shot glass and apply it the old-fashioned way with a #12 flat-head brush on heavy paper. The ink is still a little thin. Next time, I'll only dilute it 50%.

02/01/2015

02/08/2015

Moving onto Inks

    In the previous few posts I've been using 2.5mm lead holder on toned 5.5 x 8.5 inch paper and the portraits have come out well enough. However, the most important thing for any artist is proportion, and this can be studied in any scale. So, I'll work small. For the 8B graphite sketches, I forbade myself from blending, as I was trying to get used to the idea of pen sketches. The portraits below are done on 9x12 sheets. The inks were put on 140-lbs. hot-press paper, and were done from right to left, because I'm left-handed.

    This is my first time working with multiple tones-- each in a different Pentel Aquash water brush. It... isn't going smoothly. Strangely, the 1 (ink) to 8 (water) diluted ink seems darker than the 1 to 4 diluted ink. Maybe it has something to do with the Pen & Ink India Black brand I've been using, or maybe these brush pens aren't staggering the ink like they're supposed to. Maybe I just need to thin the inks a little-- a lot more. We'll see.

    Also, it seems to be a bad idea to ink dark-to-light, as I did with Sentenza (2).

Portraits on Toned Paper 2

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1969)

Brazil (1985)

Portraits on Toned Paper

     I’ve been away for a while and am now returning to the practice with a few portraits taken from Art Models 7. By the time I took my “short break” a few months ago, the final crunch of the semester was fast approaching. Getting everything squared away took longer than I thought, as always. It’s just as well. I only ever notice an increase in skill after a break.

     I don’t think I’m using the toned paper and white charcoal to their fullest, but I can say that my portraits have never looked better. Naturally, they are not as accurate or swift as I would like, but that comes down to practice. What matter is this: I can get a face on the page. Not gracefully, but sure enough. What remains is to draw face after face after face, so that I am comfortable enough with the placement of features to invent faces from any and every angle. Then, I can work on honing my technique—and my technique is very rough. In short, I have to master the long way before I can start working on shortcuts (for instance, laying down the shading in one or two layers, or leaving certain portions of a portrait strategically unfinished). I’ll only consider myself skilled when I can sketch one feature to the next with proper proportions without laying landmarks beforehand. But of course, that won’t happen overnight. So, for now I sketch portraits.

     I’ll be breaking out the watercolors when I have a palette and easel next month. For now, I’ll post every Sunday. Posting every other day was a bad idea.

Break

I'm gonna have to take a week or two off. I'm juggling midterms and research papers over here, and my exercises are suffering. I'll be back with some inkwash paintings.

Hand Figures

     A few hand figures, which I’ve by no means mastered. Some of these were drawn with the help of Bridgman’s Book of a Hundred Hands, and it shows. My problem is I’m too meticulous. Vilppu and Bridgman are okay with understating the tones so the very gets the idea. But if I see that the plane is *technically* not entirely facing me, I’ll try to shade it slightly where Vilppu would leave it white. And until I learn better control, that makes my drawings messy.

      I should also mention the lighting indicator I’m using. It’s good to indicate the direction of your lighting and check your accuracy, but I try my best to indicate precisely. The circle may not be where my light is coming from. The arrow is what’s important. And if there is no arrow, the lighting is indirect.

     I started with a few doodles to test my knowledge of proportion and flexibility. I’ll admit, it is kind of fun to shade hands, despite the tedium. The biggest challenge for now is keeping my pencil sharp, and I’m thinking of buying a few 2mm mechanical drafting pencils to help with that, but I can wait until I’ve used these Royal sketch pencils (still in the pack).

Graphite Sketch - Downed Pilot

     Upon watching a demonstration of a graphite landscape, I was struck with this little idea. I've isolated the problem with my technique: I start with the contour instead of the shadows. It's ultimately to do with my inability to visualize poses and forms properly, and this will hopefully improve over time.

     This is also a good chance to compare editing software. Until now, I've been using Windows Photo Gallery to edit pictures, but since I took the time to learn, Photoshop should be the tool from now on. The "Dust & Scratches" filter is interesting. I can see myself using it often in the future.

     The Photoshop edit does seem to push the midtones a little further back than they should be, but I'll figure out how to fix that soon enough. Besides, it emphasizes what I want to be emphasized, so it still works.

Original Scan

Windows Photo Gallery

Photoshop