Figure drawing

How to paint the figure, no pencil included.

| maggiebird

The gallery below is from a life drawing session. Click on an image to see them at larger size.

Nearly every Thursday I go to Town Hall Arts/Galerie Copper in Copperopolis for life drawing. (It’s uninstructed, but if you live near there, you should attend. It’s a great group and we’re all happy to help if you’re a beginner.) I’ve been doing this for nearly 2 years. Life drawing really helps sharpen my drawing skills. Plus, it’s just plain fun.

For the last 6 months I’ve been trying to figure out how watercolor can work for me in life drawing. Last Thursday I didn’t use a pencil at all. It was just me, the model, and brush, paint, water and paper.

There are so many things to juggle in my head when I’m painting this way. Not only am I trying to get the proportions right, but I also have to think—all at the same time—about negative space, value, shape, and what trouble the water and paint is going to get into when it hits the paper.

I’ve been thinking a lot about giving up my attachment to my end product. Painting this way is a little like I imagine jumping off a cliff in one of those crazy wingsuits would be like. Terrifying and exhilarating. Although if I make a mistake painting, there’s only a pile of chewed up paper and my bloodied ego in a pile on the floor, rather than a broken body.

Following the advice of fellow artist, Gayle Lorraine, when I start, I whisper to myself, “Let’s just waste paint and paper today.” It gives me the freedom to screw up, which also means that I work more intuitively, letting what I already know drive my hand.

There’s something else about that attitude: I make more work, which means I’m practicing more, entering into more conversations with my materials.

And as my mom always told me, practice makes perfect. Although I’m not so worried about perfection.

Which is perfect.

How to find artistic vision when you’re just groping in the dark

| maggiebird

 

Three watercolor people
5-minute figures in watercolor

Once a week I attend a life drawing session. I love figure drawing more than doing just about anything else (except maybe eating ice cream).

But for the last few months I’ve really been struggling; I’ve been looking for something in my work, a change, a way of seeing. Trouble is, I’m not sure what it is that I’m searching for. It’s something that I can’t yet define.

Other artists tell me they search too, stumbling towards a foggy idea that morphs and shifts as soon as they think they’re near.  The mind’s eye is often myopic. It’s not unusual.

It is frustrating, all those failed experiments, the ghastly embarrassments, the ever-growing stacks of used-up paper. On some days, it seems it would be easier to throw away the paintbrushes and become something simpler, a neurosurgeon maybe, or a nuclear physicist.

My brain, smarter than my heart, says, “give it up. Go watch a movie instead.”  But my stubborn and desperate heart over rules my brain. The part of my soul that aches after painting is  ever hopeful each time I stand up to the easel that this time…no…okay…this time…argh!….no, really, this time for sure I’m going to have the breakthrough I’m looking for.

I keep looking. I’m ever hopeful that one day I’ll paint around a hair-pin turn and suddenly the thing I’m looking for—the thing I can’t even describe or identify on a map—will come into focus and I”ll be able to grab it.

“There you are, you little monkey,” I’ll exclaim, clutching at it before it can get away.

Which of course means it must get away. Because if it doesn’t wriggle from my hand and dance back into the dimly lit future, it’ll die in my cramped and rigid fist. Then where will my artistic vision be?

I like to know it’s there in the half-light of my mind, taunting me, teasing me with occasional flashes of clarity (usually when I’m in the shower). So I slog on, trying to paint smartly, fearlessly, easily. And as I feel my way through the dark, every so often a faint light will glimmer across a portion of my work. A brush stroke that shows the turn of a shoulder. A happy color choice. A gracefully proportionate figure. And that flicker will be enough to keep me going.

Small steps. Baby steps. Sometimes steps that go backwards. That’s all I can do as an artist: Put one foot in front of the other and keep working. Because it’s the thing that makes my heart sing, even when I’m grinding my teeth with frustration.

How about you, dear readers? What are you stretching for in your art? Share in the comments how you keep yourself working.

Watercolor figure
20-minute pose in watercolor

 

 

Four artists, one life-drawing session

| maggiebird

Last Thursday I hosted a drawing session at my house. It was so much fun that I can’t wait to host another one. It was a great group of artists, all confident in their own hand, and strong with their own vision. I’d like to show you some of their work.

Sue Smith
Drawing by Sue Smith

I could watch Sue Smith draw all day long. She has such a delicate touch of charcoal to paper, yet a strength of form and line; her hand moves like it’s dancing when she draws.

Sarah Switek
Drawing by Sarah Switek

Sarah is also a sculptor, and I think that her knowledge of all dimensions of a form gave this drawing substance even though it’s drawn primarily with an energetic line and just a little shading.

You can see her work here: adobehillsstudio.wordpress.com

 

Durkee
Drawing by George Durkee

I envy George’s ability to draw with such expressive marks. His drawings are always spare and minimal, but the lines are loose and free. And he makes it look so easy. Drat you, Geo (not really).

You can see his work, and his wonderful videos here: www.gadurkee.com

Margaret Sloan
Drawing by Margaret Sloan

And mine…

How to make sketches into compositions

| maggiebird
Drawing of dad with baby
Sketching at the Farmer’s market
Dad with baby
Sigma Micron pen in Stillman & Birn Delta Series sketchbook

As I’ve grown more comfortable with my sketching abilities, I’ve begun to think about creating compositions rather than making isolated sketches. This comes from looking at other urban sketchers work; I admire the completeness of their drawings, the way they are like little stories rather than disparate elements on a page. I want sketchbook pages that look like  whole pictures rather than a spotty collection of scrawls.

But it’s taken me a while to get to this place, to exert control over my drawings rather than my drawings controlling me. But once I began trying to design my sketches, it’s like a whole new artistic world opened up to me.

Here are a few things I’ve learned.

  • Establish the center of interest Of course, the focal point is almost always the figure that attracted my attention in the first place. I like to place that initial figure in an interesting position on the page, using the concept of the rule of thirds for an arbitrary placement of interest.
  • Start building a grouping around them People are always moving, so I have to be quick to capture multiple figures in a composition. But other things—tables, buildings, windows, chairs—don’t move much (if they did, I might be running for cover!). So I like to inanimate objects soon in the composition.
  • Let figures overlap Overlapping figures and objects help create depth. I make sure I’ve got the perspective of objects advancing or receding through space by measuring angles and size as carefully and as quickly as I can.
  • Don’t worry about detail I’ve had to give up my love of niggly little detail when sketching, so the people in the background don’t have developed eyes, noses, and mouths. It really doesn’t add anything to the sketch, and anyway, is hard to do on the fly. I’m looking for the big shapes.
  • Look for framing I find ways to frame my center of interest. Sometimes that’s easy. Maybe I can add a window, a wall, a square of some type behind them. Other times I look for ways that figures in the background can be manipulated to strengthen the center of interest.
  • Don’t give up too soon I keep working at my sketch, even if I think I’ve destroyed it. Even though I want my sketchbook pages to look like pictures, I realize that my sketchbook is also my place to play around, experiment, have some fun. I don’t have to show it to anyone if I don’t want to. My sketch book is my personal playground. I can run around in it however I want, pen screaming and my hand turning cartwheels, drawing like I’m swinging from the monkey bars and flying from the swings. It’s the fun that keeps me at it, and it’s the perseverance that builds skills.

Happy sketching!

Sketching at the Farmer's market Nap time Micron pen in Stillman & Birn Delta Series sketchbook
Sketching at the Farmer’s market
Nap time
Micron pen in Stillman & Birn Delta Series sketchbook

Sketching at the Farmer’s market

| maggiebird

It’s not quite urban sketching, but our local farmer’s market is in a town, and the market is big enough that there are plenty of peaches, tomatoes, squash, and cucumbers for everyone. And plenty of people for me to sketch as I slouch over my sketchbook, hiding next to the fiddler as he plays Shove the Pig’s Foot a little Further into the Fire (the naming of American old time tunes is a mystery to me).

drawing of little boy
Sketching at the Farmer’s market
Little boy with hat
Pigma Micron pen in Stillman & Birn Delta Series sketchbook

Kids are the best to sketch, as they stick around a long time to listen to the music, maybe dance a little, schmooze with the musicians, snack on strawberries. And the parents are only too happy to hang out in the shade of the big oak tree, chatting with other moms and dads, drinking a smoothie, and admiring their offspring.

Drawing of kids' faces
Sketching at the Farmer’s market
Kids’ faces
Pigma Micron pen in Stillman & Birn Delta Series sketchbook

Which they should, as all children are absolutely beautiful and so new they’re translucent. Young things are a marvel.

Drawing the shifting tides of humanity isn’t easy. They just won’t stand still!  But it’s one of my very favorite things to do. I watch closely; people will often adopt a standard position—a tilt of the head, the cocking of a hip, a graceful touch of a hand to the face—that is part of their likeness. They may deviate from that position, but they eventually return to it, as it’s where they’re most comfortable.

My job as a sketcher is to watch for these attitudes, as well as see (and here I mean see closely) the shape and angle of head and facial features, body posture and type, and then remember it all, so I can translate what I see into drawings in my sketchbook. Drawing is, after all, a memory game, and the more we develop our memory, the better our drawing becomes.

Class alert: August 13th I’m teaching a class on drawing the portrait from a live model at Town Hall Arts/Gallery Copper in Copperopolis, starting at 9:30 sharp. If you live nearby, I hope you can make it.

For your listening pleasure:

Beginner’s Mind for the Student

| maggiebird
Day_of_Sketching
Lots of life drawing. Drawings on the back of the paper too.

“The goal of practice is always to keep our beginner’s mind.” ― Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice

Yesterday I wrote of the need for the teacher to practice the beginner’s mind. Today I want to talk about that childlike inquisitiveness as a student.

By student, I mean that we should all be learning constantly, and especially when practicing art. But it’s easy when creating art to fall into habit, to be mindless, bored, resistant, or just lazy. Or to be so driven by results that we forget that the process is where we make progress.

I practice figure drawing a lot. I draw from internet sources like the Croquis Cafe, life drawing sessions, and real life. And I consider accuracy to the form to be important.

I usually draw with line, or block in my figures, then progress to value to build the form. There’s nothing wrong with that. But a recent discussion with a student who wanted to draw the figure as if it were a painting—using only values and no line—made me start thinking about other ways to create a figure. As I said yesterday, I need to get out of tunnels I’m stuck in; they’re dank and sloggy, and I feel like I’m not getting anywhere. So I decided to force myself to adopt a different kind of process for drawing the figure.

Gesture_2_minute_Line
2-minute drawing from model on Croquis Cafe

The drawing above is how I normally approach life drawing. I like to make sure everything on the contour is accurate before I begin describing form shapes.

GraphiteSketch_Line
15-minute drawing from model on Croquis Cafe

I usually make a contour drawing describing the shapes of the form and cast shadows, then fill in the values. This is my classical realism tunnel; thanks Bargue plates.

Drawing from model on Croquis Cafe
2-minute drawing from model on Croquis Cafe

So I decided to change things up. Instead of a charcoal pencil, I used a block of charcoal, and tried really hard not to let myself devolve into line, but instead, draw the figure using broad strokes to create shapes that described the form, without the benefit of line and pre-planning. Something different happened here, although I was unable to complete the entire figure in 2 minute gesture poses.

CharcoalSketch_Shape
20-minute drawing from model on Croquis Cafe

I tried a longer pose, still trying to limit myself to shape only, carving out the form with an eraser when needed. You can see that some lines snuck in to the drawing, despite my best intentions. However, this one has a different life to it than the other (although it’s very hard to manage proportions with this method).

My point is not that I drew better or worse using either style. My point is that, as an artist, taking a beginner’s mind attitude when I work leads to new discoveries. I don’t get so bound up in what I know, or the need to have a successful drawing. The outcome for my own personal projects (illustration work-for-hire is another story) is not as important as the process.

Dear reader, next time you’re creating art, do something you’ve not done before, or that you don’t like to do. Do something that makes you feel silly: Dance while you draw. Paint with a leaf and a feather, or even a rock. Be happy and light-hearted, focused as well as scattered, and learn something new!

The Beginner’s Mind for a teacher

| maggiebird
Watercolor of laughing baby
Noah
Watercolor on Arches #300 hot press
© 2014 Margaret Sloan

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”—Shunryu Suzuki in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

A friend (and fabulous painter/film maker) George Durkee recently introduced me to the concept of beginner’s mind. It’s the idea that you need to keep a child’s mind—open, curious, and free of expectations—when studying. The attitude that you should attack your studies as if you are not an expert, even if you are studying at an advanced level.

I’ve only recently begun to teach life drawing, transmitting the knowledge of figure and form I received from my teacher, Rob Anderson (you can see his work here, but sadly, he has left us for that studio beyond this world), and I sometimes struggle to explain my methods.

So when George mentioned the beginner’s-mind attitude, and I thought about it a little, I realized that it doesn’t apply only to student, but to teacher as well.

When I’m talking to a student, sometimes my brain descends into a mental tunnel, where the concept I’m trying to explain becomes a mere whisper of what I want to teach. That faint echo is only slightly audible over the noise of my own pedantically droning voice and blathering insecurities.  Over all that racket, of course I have trouble hearing the student.

But the students are my real focus, are they not? And if they ask a question, or encounter difficulty in figuring out overlapping forms, proportions, or lines of action, then I need to figure out how to answer them with my own beginner’s mind. To find a different way to explain, or give them another tool for translating the human form to a 2-dimensional drawing. And to do that, I need to stop and open my mind up to other possibilities.

Sometimes it’s hard to make a sharp left turn when I’ve been so focused on trudging through a tunnel, but I’m learning (slowly) that it’s best to surrender to the dog-leg and play on lit like a child so that it leads me to the open air.

Figure grouping and stories I tell myself during life drawing

| maggiebird

 

Life Drawing Group
Shakespeare while waiting for the train
10-minute poses in charcoal on smooth paper.

Life drawing can quickly get out of control, with the figure’s head and feet disappearing off the edges of the paper, or a little  drawing floating lost in a sea of newsprint. One way I like to corral my drawings is by arranging the figures so that they relate to each other on the page. This forces me to design the perspective (what size should they be for the figures to make sense?); imagine overlapping forms (correctly layered, the forms will then indicate depth); and practice size and proportion control (no more figures falling off the paper). And I have to do this all on the fly, as the model changes position.

I often tell myself stories while I do this. I’m a compulsive story teller (yeah, you say lies, I say plot) and I often create narrative arcs, complete with build up, climax, and denouement, when I’m drawing. That inner literary tension, coupled with the stresses of figure drawing, makes life drawing doubly exciting for me.

The drawing below, for example, became a scene from a book the Fiddler and I are enjoying right now, World Without End by Ken Follett. My drawing is not about the main characters, but the faceless prisoners of war that might have been taken during Edward III campaign in France (Yes, I realize those luckless souls were probably not taken alive, but in my story they lived at least bit before they were chopped into bits.) Telling a story entertains me as well as directing the placement of my figures, and the discipline of grouping the figures really improves my life drawing.

Figure drawing group
Prisoners of war
5-minute drawings with charcoal on smooth paper

Class alert

I will be teaching a figure drawing class this Thursday, June 11 at 9:30 – 12:30, at Town Hall Arts/Galerie Copper in Copperopolis in the Central Sierra. We will be studying how the head fits on the torso. All you need is a pad of newsprint and some charcoal (that’s the beauty of drawing), and you can buy those items at Town Hall Arts.

30-in-30: Figure drawing in watercolor above the speed limit

| maggiebird
Figure drawing in watercolor
2 5-minute poses on cheap watercolor paper

Today I went to the figure drawing session at Town Hall Arts Galerie Copper in Copperopolis.  Unfortunately, the model didn’t show up, so we took turns posing (clothed) for the group. It was fun to have so many different figures changing it up. But unfortunately, it’s really hard for non-models to hold poses even as short at 15 minutes. Readers, a good model who can hold a long pose over and over again? They are worth every penny they earn, and I hope that you always tip your models accordingly.

Figure drawing in watercolor
5-minute poses on cheap watercolor paper

Since the poses had to be really short, I had to develop a kind of shorthand quick-stroke, using very simple shapes that were separated with white space so the paint didn’t all run together into a big wet blob.

The time went so fast that I couldn’t draw with pencil and finish with watercolor. The work below was all I could muster in 10 minutes. I might play around with this a bit in the studio, but I really wish this woman would pose for me (for longer than 10 minutes). She has a beautiful face and elegant demeanor. If she reads this, I hope she’ll agree.

Figure drawing in watercolor
10-minute poses on cheap watercolor paper

Drawing with the paint brush (wait, that’s really painting, right?) forces my brain to judge shapes, angles, and proportion without the help of guidelines, angle marks, extra marks, and erasing. So it’s a great exercise. And it leaves me longing for a good, four-hour pose.

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