Sketchcrawl

Finally made it to a full sketchcrawl yesterday! It was a little chilly out there but it was a lot of fun to see the great variety of stuff artists came up with in this Ghiradelli Square meetup... think we had the street caricaturists beat pretty handily :)

I had a fairly average day, nothing I'm crazy over, but it was relaxing to be outside and drawing/laughing at shivering tourists (Will they ever learn that Fisherman's Wharf is not an ideal place to break out the shorts?). Here are a few sample pages:

Drawing Sessions

Whew, it's been a busy month! I haven't been attending Gesture Drawing lately in favor of a fantastic storytelling class I've been taking through work, taught by Joel Ben Izzy. Not sure if I'll post any stories here, but I've been learning so much; it's certainly been an inspiration to do more writing... I've also been working on an animation test in the mornings and even got in a snowboarding/ski trip to Park City, Utah, for my friend Joey's bachelor party.

Anyhow, I made it to today's Life Drawing session and we got to play by Gesture Drawing rules, so here are a few results from a sequence:

Sketchbook

Just drew this play on Jack Black while watching "School of Rock", thought it was a promising lead:


... and I got out for a couple of hours last Sunday to do some sketching around the Embarcadero:

Drawing Sessions

One of the tougher things about sticking to a plan of learning to draw from model sessions is how the poses and models tend to fall into repetitive patterns or otherwise grow tired - especially on an uninstructed, prop-free and open Wednesday life drawing session, where things are a little more restricted than in a relatively fast-paced Gesture session. To have some fun with an old game, I've decided to start working on characters, using the model only for pose inspiration. Here's a caricatured IT guy loosely based on someone from my past:

Drawing Sessions

Made it to Wednesday but not Tuesday this week, felt surprisingly loose considering how I've been getting limited practice at home lately.






Question of the day: How is it that cell phone providers like Verizon can get away with charging so much for batteries? The Verizon store wanted to give me a "deal" by "giving" me 25% off their regular price for a phone battery... which was $40! 5 minutes on Amazon, and I found a well-rated replacement for just $7 + shipping. Accessories must be to Cell phone providers what cables are for Best Buy.


Obama 2008!

Drawing Sessions

Recent storms brought in the best snow I've ever seen at Lake Tahoe this past weekend (lots of tree riding at Squaw!); unfortunately it also brought blinding 120mph gusts of wind, which closed the roads out of the mountains and stranded Mark, Mahyar and I for an unexpected Sunday night at the Cal Neva bar. We woke up at 4am Monday morning to chase a small window of potential freeway re-openings, and made it back to Oakland in time for work.

As for drawing: I got a pretty good note in class to look more for the abstract shape of a pose before committing to even the limbs of a character. Will try to push for that more in the next session...

Gesture Drawing

Coachella's lineup was announced today... I'm thinking about it, but leaning away this year. Roger Waters would be cool, but for the $500 it takes for me to make the trip, this new lineup just seems to fall a little short. Keeping me in the game is a review of some of my favorite 2007 shows streaming fresh off the 'nano: Rodrigo y Gabriela, Of Montreal, Hot Chip, Metric, and Gotan Project.

Meanwhile, back at gesture drawing:

Drawing Sessions (From the Stack)

I usually bring all my drawings home from class and toss them in a growing stack of newsprint paper. When I have time, I take a few pages from the top of the stack, re-drawing poses in a sketchbook and taking a second look at successes and failures. Here are a few interesting ones from December that had been buried...

Drawing Sessions