All posts in Life Drawing

Chris got the outlines of his new tattoo started yesterday: a circus themed sleeve of epic proportions, done by the talented and prolific Jason Kundell at Artwork Rebels in Portland. I brought my sketchbook along.

A page from my sketchbook of some recent life drawing. I haven’t been since June, so the drawing felt rather labored the whole time. Also, I didn’t eat breakfast. Always, always remember to eat before going to life drawing. You don’t want to be that guy breaking the silence with your gargley stomach noises. Trust me it’s awkward.

I recently bought some screentones at a local Japanese bookstore, and I’m aiming to do more mixed media experimentation in my sketchbook. I’ll post some samples soon.

So I’m trying to take things a step further this week. Still working with straight ink, but moving away from thinking so linearly about the edges. Instead, I wanted to construct the body mass by mass, not line by line. It’s like working from the inside out, rather than the outside in. Or, you can think of it in terms of sculpting. I have one of those refillable Japanese brushes (can’t remember the brand), that I filled with some watery ink. I just worked light to dark, building up the shape volumes in layers. At the very end, I used a black brush pen to define some of the poster edge and a few particularly dark folds in the skin. Next week I may bring some white gouache to go back into the highlights a bit. 5-20 minutes on these.