Happy Groundhog Day dear reader! So I have much news for you today and, yes, even some artwork. Where to begin...
Let's start with the artwork. As promised I'm sharing with you today some of my pencil pieces. Rather, one "finished" piece and the other two are sketches because in my spare time when I'm not drawing I'm doodling.
The first two are David Beckham and Mel Gibson (from the Braveheart cover, not his DUI mugshot...oooh, cheap shot).Mr. Beckham's pic was taken from a Vanity Fair article and the sketch is a bit older and took about 20 minutes. I didn't bother pushing the values with this one and I do remember that when I was doing it I was more concerned with getting proportions correct rather than be fiddly about shading. There are things that are "off" but it served it's purpose as a sketch.
Mel's sketch was just for fun and I wound up working on values with it. There's only so much you can do with a cheapy HB pencil. I have to admit that I really love doing pencil sketches of people that have wrinkles in their face, especially if you've got some wacky lighting going on. The only thing I lament with this one is that Mel's nose is off. I buggered it up and made it too wide but this was fairly small (1.5x1.5 inches approx) so I didn't want to go back and re-work it. After all, it's a sketch...
The last one is a finished piece, a rose (duh, really Rita?) This is a slightly older piece, from last June I think, but it was such fun to do. Roses are fiddly things to draw but if you get it right there's a bizzare sense of satisfaction that comes from completing such a complicated flower. This one is 5x7 and was #5 in a series of rose studies I did.
So there you have it. Fun with pencils!
So, on to the second portion of our program. I have decided to undertake a project that is a "Monthly Master" of sorts. A group of artists that participate in the WetCanvas! artist forum I frequent (the same way that Norm frequented Cheers) have decided to take on a project that involves studying the habits, techniques and nitty-gritties of Master artists and ultimately within that month complete a finished piece with the essence of that particular artist. For January they studied John Singer Sargent and for the month of February they will be studying Vincent VanGogh.
For those that know me well, they know that I absolutely love VanGogh. I can still remember the giant "Irises" poster I had on my bedroom wall when I was 11 years old. Yes, I'm that much of a geek. What it boils down to is that a project like this was just far to tempting to pass up...
What does this mean? It means that I can try to understand the man behind the severed ear by duplicating one of his works or taking what I learn and adapting it to my own style of working. The idea is to have my work infused with VanGogh-ism which isn't such a bad thing at all.
As a result of this undertaking I'll probably be posting here quite a bit more frequently as I share with you my discoveries, my explorations and what happens when you eat an entire tube of cadmium red oil paint.
So starting tomorrow I will have a post for you about Vincent and what I already know of him and his work. Heck, I may even have some of my own work to show as well...
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