Oh hey yall!

what's going on!!

figured i'd get this train moving - i think i'll dive right in and post a few drawings i'm happy with and talk a little about my process!

starting off with cante;



i've been structuring my figures off in value first - rarely will i ever start out linear - and if i do it's usually an outline to remind myself where to erase back for a highlight. i then set out to see what shapes the body makes to put down a rough half-dark shape for a shadow. . . at this point i usually bring out a terry cloth towel and push all the cante into the page - i found the towel works best just in case you have some unwanted grease from your hand that ends up laying ontop of your drawing after smudging like a mad man. from here its a quick and easy step to what you see above - refining the shadow shapes, not touching the half light areas until the very end and erasing the highlighted portions of the body - fun stuff!

next up is a graphite / charcoal wash;



this is one of my favorite and most simple techniques! same core idea as the previous above drawings - only this time i started with a tight linear sketch and used that as the base of the drawing. i did a lot of rubbing and erasing back in this one - it got pretty violent! i do that to push the values into the paper more and more to create a subtle layer of tone, then continued to use my magicrub to take out the highlights and go back in with another layer. after i got to a point where i was happy with the shadow shapes / highlights, i took some charcoal and broke it up into a fine pigment, then dumped it into a cup of water. once it was mixed to where i wanted it, i did a quick wash over all the areas except the highlights to try and unify the values.

last but not least - watercolor




this is probably the most simple and quickest traditional medium i've used to capture tone! with these, i started off with a super loosey-goosey sketch of the figure - once i was happy with where i was at i started to bring out the paint. i didn't really do these with what i had been taught in media class, i tried to use a absolute minimal amount of water here.


i was going for the simplistic look because that's what i think this medium is meant for - like i said, i didn't use a lot of water here, just enough to get a simple tone down - and i did that without lifting my brush as much as possible for each layer of wash (these were only 2 washes)




figure drawing to me is rediculously crucial to us all illustrators in my opinion - its the most dynamic way of impacting each and every one of your drawing skills directly, the amount of knowledge you gain by just observing the figure is priceless! it is afterall the core skill we rely on the most. . . i'm constantly trying to improve myself by looking at people who make me cry myself asleep;


Henry Yan



Zhaoming Wu



Nicolai Fechin



Aaron Coberly



Jeremy Lipking (the man!!)



ok so maybe i cheated on the last one, but hes still an amazing figure painter and worthy of taking the time to see!

BUT! what i want to know is who are you all looking at for inspiration? whose style have you been trying to rip off / steal / borrow to get you where you want to be as an artist at this point in time?

i think it's always important to be looking around - i just got over my infatuation with alex ross . . . well kinda, heh - but he uses figure reference for everything he does! people in full costume come and pose for his comic paintings and he uses it directly for his illustrations! amazing artist

so lets hear it! more importantly - lets see some work!


p.s.
im going to be resurrecting my sketchbook ( monumental occasion ) and plan to be doing a lot of life drawing at barnes&noble, starbucks, the new chipotle - basically where a lot of people are gathered - on the weekends to keep my eye sharp just for an hour or two. . . anyone is welcome and consider this an open invitation!

cheers,
tyler