Buttnekkiddoodles

Just drawing the full figure from life enough these days. So this past Thursday and Friday I put in a little time but still got caught up in the partials.

Steven Assael happened to be at the Palette & Chisel teaching a workshop and sat in on the Friday night life drawing session. I was behind him for a couple of poses and enjoyed watching him draw as I sheet he’d him n the act. Also included are a few head studies acquired in transit.

   

Various inks, fountain pens, Pitt Artist Pens, Seven Seas Tomoe River Paper.

Catching up with posting some of the drawings from the last 3 months. I haven’t been keeping a regular practice of drawing from nude models and I think that shows at times in the uneven examples of trying to get a worthwhile drawing in 25 minutes. The drawings. Are usually executed in the Faber-Castellated pigmented Pitt Pens that have been my workhorse in addition to fountain pens. The models asymmetrical eyes bug the shit outta me but that’s all in the realm of spontaneous drawing with no erasure. I truly enjoy and value working that way but one is guaranteed to get the bloopers that torment, but may in time inform and alert one.

the drawings of the male with the staff were draw ar Forestall Art Center in Birminham, Al. Long time favorite Melissa modeled out in Wheaton. The male model below posed at San Clemente Art Supply.

      

The gentleman above was captured as he drew Melissa. I’m pretty inconsistent in getting a likeness, but I was on the money in the version on the left. He was quite intense in his gaze. Holding you sketchbook thus while drawing for 25 minutes isn’t the easiest thing to manage so he constantly shifted his weight and posture and made many raptor-like faces. On the right, I lost the feel of him and rounded his features a bit, also clipped his nose a tad and pulled the cheek crease from his nose to far into the lateral plane of his face. That was enuff to loose the likeness. Oh well…

The Fall returns and so too does my annual early morning trek to Chicago’s Palette & Chisel Art Center for their 12 hour life drawing marathon. Even though I’m 35 years away from the last time I had to obey the seasonal call to the classroom and the Monday morning blues, I still like to begin the academic calendar year in auspicious fashion. Hence I rise at dawn to capture on paper, the daylong writhing and heroic posturing of half a dozen models, some of whom I’ve drawn for more than 6-7 years.

    

I’ll add more to this post once this toy posing as a computer, aka my iPad, decides to start performing again. After several Time Out Request and endless waits for Updates to kick in, I need a break.

    

I got in just over 11 hours of drawing on Labor Day. In general, it was a good day tho I had a couple drawings come up short. It’s interesting to me that most activities can wear me out as time runs on but my drawing strengthens the more I put into it. Long days generally invigorate me and I’ve never suffered from “writer’s fatigue”, repetitive motion, or carpal tunnel syndrome.

The day’s gear involved a ledger book, a Rhodia lined journal, some fountain pens, Platinum Carbon ink, and various nibbed Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens in several shades of grey.

Drawing ain’t dead.

Haven’t been drawing from the model much for some months. Caught the figure above while conducting Urban Sketching workshops in Chicago. I was at the Palette & Chisel and saw Larry Paulsen so I ran upstairs to his figure drawing class and got in an hour of a long pose. Below, a page I’ve kept working on, adding the skulls next to previously drawn poses. I made use of a Pitt Artist Pen Big Brush White and a white grease pencil to help pull some features out of the tangle of over sketching, aka pentimento.

The shoulder area is so important that I wanted to draw x-ray super-imposed bones of that region into the figures’ but the drawing became cluttered enough so I intend to work some of those up at a later date.

The ledger book I’ve been working in, above, has been a real joy and takes the inks beautifully.

Some nude studies from the past year.

        

Burning thru my reserves of ledger books but that is not all bad. I’ve been really leaning on Pitt Pens and fountain pens and it might prove interesting if not valuable to make a concerted return to graphite.