Recent Figure Sketches

I have an hour between the classes I teach at UVU, during that hour Don Seegmiller is kind enough to let me sit in and sketch in his class while I wait. These are some of the better results from the last couple of months. Each is between 30 and 50 minutes in duration

 This one is from a warm up with J. Kirk Richard's painting group last Wednesday. I used two watersoluble color pencils and a white chalk pencil to do this one.

Gesture Drawing Demos

I teach figure drawing at the 100 level at Brigham Young University. We focus a lot on the form figure and a simplified version of anatomical structure in this class. Students initially begin with the line of action, an armature, basic form figure, anatomical contours and notations, and simple light and dark value structure. We've just started applying enveloping and comparative measuring techniques using the head as a basic system of measure. This first image is an example of the process. The black conte was used for the underlying aspects and I saved the red conte for the contours. I had them break the drawing down into 20 minute segments for a one hour drawing. The First 20 was used to place the Line of Action, the head heights and widths, and the envelope. The Second 20 was used to lay in the armature and the form figure. The Third 20 was used to put in the contours and values. I spent about 10 minutes on this drawing, working up to each level quickly and then going around to check and see how everyone else was doing.

We start out each class by warming up with quick gestures. We start at 3 minutes and work our way down to 10 second poses. This is a sample of one session progressively going from 3 minutes to 10 seconds.

In these drawings you can see the underlying armature and line of action and how I apply them.

Head Drawing Demo

A little in class demo on bristol board that has been lightly coated with shellac. The shellac creates a nice surface and allows for easier erasing. The drawing is in graphite and stabilo pencil.

Gesture Painting

Kirk Richards invited me to come paint with his group on Wednesday nights. He likes to start his students with gesture figure paintings as a way of helping them loosen up and get more comfortable with the paint. I brought blue black, transparent oxide red, and titanium white to do mine with. I taped down a piece of 9"x12" Canva paper prepared with shellac and did these two on it in about 15 minutes per pose.

Imprimatura Demonstration

Imprimatura demonstration from the Fall semester, that I did for my Head Rendering course I teach at UVU. I used transparent brown oxide and raw umber over canson canva paper that I had prepared with a double coating of clear shellac. It leaves the surface slick enough to enable me to easily whipe out the lights. I primarily used a fan brush to avoid applying too many details and kept to about 2 hours in painting it between talking about what I was doing and assisting students in their work.

 

A couple things to note, on the left hand side you'll see a darker smudge, I showed what happens if you let your solvent be the only chemical you use at this stage and how it affects the skin of the paint. On the right I showed the difference between using a shop towel to wipe away paint and a kneaded eraser.

Letchworth and Nearby Studies

I spent about a week in the area between Buffalo, NY and Letchworth State Park in the summer of 2010. These are some of my sketches from that time.