Drawing practice

[shadesofmauve]

At my annual review my boss gave me permission to practice figure drawing for 15 minutes a day as 'professional development', since we never get any training opportunities back here in design land*.

I haven't actually managed it every work day, but it's still better than I had been getting. I'm saving jpgs of all the sketch pages so I can look back at 'em later.

Today I cheated and took a full half hour, though:



The really funny thing is that it took me about two weeks of this before it occurred to me that I was looking at nekkid people pictures at work.

*Technically HR is supposed to pay for any training opportunities if we go out and find them, but there aren't any classes in town that would really add to my level of CS knowledge, the time we tried to organize a trip to Seattle for an official Adobe workshop HR dropped the ball on our registration, and I've been begging for a Lynda.com membership for YEARS. So: No professional development.

Comments

[stasia]

OMG, that's fabulous. Where are you getting your model images? And WTF is up with that one on the bottom? I can't figure it out.

Stasia

[shadesofmauve]

I'm using the figure drawing tool here: http://artists.pixelovely.com/

This time I'd set it for 'half hour class'; usually I just give myself 10 30 seconds, 5 1 minutes, and 1 five minute.

The bottom model was laying on her back with her upper torso and on her side with her hips... so she was basically a cat. :P I see one thing I'd change to make that clearer, but I actually caught it fairly well, given minimal shading -- it's just a weird pose!

[stasia]

Oh, great site! Merrie showed me this one: Thirty Second Poses.

That bottom one looks like her torso is pointing toward the viewer and her butt also pointing toward the viewer. I keep staring at it.

Stasia

[shadesofmauve]

Here's the same image with another 15 seconds of work to make it clearer. The added shading is NOT where shadow actually was, because of the lighting angle and the fact that gravity stretched the breast flat:



And then here's the super clarified version, just for you:



:P

[stasia]

I am now laughing so hard that I can't quite stand yet. Thanks for the BOOBZ.

I'm off, with Merrie, to the yarn store (want any colored string), but she does arty figure stuff as well and she prefers the second version, with added faked-in shadows.

Stasia

[shadesofmauve]

I agree with her! But since it's only a practice sketch and I've already produced the definitive BOOBZ 4 STASIA version, I see no reason to gild the lily. :P

[mcjulie.livejournal.com]

That's pretty awesome.

I do very little design work right now and feel like my drawing skills are atrophying something fierce.

[shadesofmauve]

I hear you. That's really what this is about -- I've been doing graphic design day-in, day-out, but very little drawing, so I'm trying to get back in the groove. The nice thing is it does come back, so I improve faster than when I was first learning. The frustrating thing is that half the time I struggle with something for weeks and then remember that it's actually something I was taught about in school. :P