33 at Life Drawing for #oneweek100people2017

3/9/17 brush pen, rainbow pencils (20-min. pose)

Since I didn’t do any sketches at all yesterday for #oneweek100people2017, I knew I had to get on the ball today. Too lazy to go looking for people, I took the easy route: I went to a life drawing session at Gage! With 33 more sketches under my belt, that brings my total to 85. One more day to go – it’ll be a piece of cake! (To see a collage of all of today’s sketches, see my Instagram account.)

How are you doing on the challenge? Are you having so much fun you’ll be sad to see it end? Or are you happy it’s almost over?

3/9/17 brush pens (2-min. poses)

3/9/17 brush pens (5-min. poses)

Shapes and Values

3/8/17 colored pencils, smooth Bristol (in progress)

This week’s colored pencil class exercise is a major departure from all the previous ones. Using a photo reference with strong value contrasts, we are to focus firmly on the shapes and values in a limited color range – no textures, no details, no forms – almost to the point of abstraction. After weeks of highly detailed work that focused on form and realism, my classmates and I were all a bit shaken and puzzled this morning – what the heck?? And how?!

Fortunately, we had enough time to get a good start on the assignment during class so we could ask lots of questions. (For most of the prior exercises, we had a few minutes in class but did the bulk of the work at home. I think I would have been lost trying to start this on my own.) With Suzanne’s prompting, however (mostly constant reminders that we should stick to shapes and values), it started to click into place for me.

In fact, not only did it click – I started seeing this exercise as an entry to using colored pencils for urban sketching. Though it’s not quite done, shown here is about an hour’s worth of work. This approach is much faster than anything we’ve done before, and with more practice, I think I could be even faster. It takes some doing to get used to the “blurry” look – when I look at this, I feel like I’ve forgotten to put my glasses on! – but if I get the values right, it should still be credible and “readable.” That’s the goal, anyway.

At my request, Suzanne promised to talk at the end of the quarter about colored pencil techniques for sketching on location (and she concurred with my speculation that today’s exercise is one of them). Yes! My diligence and hard work this quarter will finally pay off – I’ll be able to apply what I’ve learned to sketches that match my style (instead of these time-consuming drawings from photo references which I may never attempt again once the class is over).

reference photo

(In class all morning and at an appointment in the afternoon, I made exactly zero sketches of people today for #oneweek100people2017! I’ll have to work double time tomorrow.) 

Day 2 of #oneweek100people2017

3/7/17 brush pen

Yesterday I was short on time, so I sped through my first 28 sketches of people in 50 minutes with the objective of simply getting as many done as possible. On day 2 of the #oneweek100people2017 challenge, my time was more flexible, so I went to my favorite neighborhood coffee shop, Zoka Coffee.

I made almost the same number today – 24 – but I took more time, not so much on individual sketches but on thinking about the whole small page spread as a composition (similar to the pocket sketchbook vignettes Gabi taught in his workshop a few weeks ago). I didn’t always follow his suggestion for including a small, a medium and a large image to compose the page, but three images often worked well together on a spread.

 

3/7/17 brush pen, colored pencil

I’m having so much fun with these! The simple materials I’ve chosen for this challenge – a small Field Notes Sweet Tooth notebook with yellow paper and a brush pen with occasional colored pencil highlights – are working out just right. Instead of feeling pressured by the challenge, I’m feeling liberated: I’m simply meeting the project goal of making 100 people sketches and my personal goal of using as few marks as possible to evoke a real person. Although my results are not much different from the type of coffee shop sketches that I usually do, the narrow focus and limited materials paradoxically feel open and loose. I don’t have to waffle about any choices – I just sit down and sketch.

#Oneweek100people2017 Begins!

3/6/17 brush pen

Are you participating in #Oneweek100people2017, the online challenge initiated by Marc Holmes and Liz Steel? I am! It’s not limited to urban sketching – you can make selfies, draw from photos or TV or, of course, draw from life. I’m going to sketch from life on location whenever I can (but if I run out of time at the end of the week, I might resort to selfies).

Making a hundred sketches of people in five days is somewhat challenging, but not if you lower your standards. 😉 As Marc says, “The goal is PRACTICE. Not perfection” (and that guy just did his 100 sketches in one day!). A little pressed for time today, I dashed over to our neighborhood mall’s food court at noon and sketched 28 people in about 50 minutes. Some were individual portraits, and a couple sketches were of groups. I think I could easily finish the challenge during a week of lunch breaks. (Frankly, I think Marc needs to up his game next year and make 500 sketches! 😜)

 

3/6/17 brush pen

My goal for this challenge (and actually, almost any time I sketch a person from life) is to make as few marks as possible and still evoke an individual – through expression, gesture or posture – and not a generic symbol. I wasn’t always successful today, but that’s my goal. And, of course, the primary goal is to have fun! Join me, and remember to share online with the hashtag #Oneweek100people2017.

3/6/17 brush pen

Backyard Birds with Bonus Squirrel

3/1/17 water-soluble colored pencils (chickadee)

About a month ago we got a bird feeder. I had been noticing lots of small birds hopping around in the lilac and mock orange trees outside our kitchen window, and I wanted to sketch them, but I couldn’t see them very well through the branches. If we put a feeder out there, I said to myself, they would be easier to see and might even stick around long enough to sketch! A minute later I had ordered a hanging feeder from Amazon, and two days later, Greg put it up.

The tiny birds – mostly chestnut-backed chickadees and dark-eyed juncos – are easier to see now as they cling to the side or bottom of the feeder to peck the seeds out, but sketching them requires an incremental process. First I simply try to capture the gestures – the acrobatic stances they take to hang from the feeder or perch on a branch. This takes many tries to get the shape and proportions right, and I have several poses going at the same time. Animals repeat the same poses and motions over and over, so as soon as one bird moves, another will probably take on the same pose, or the first one will return to the original pose in a few seconds. Once I get a contour that looks adequate, it takes many more sightings to get the coloring and details, which I add or correct one at a time. I know this sounds like a time-consuming process, but I probably spend no more than 10 minutes per sketch.

2/26/17 (dark-eyed junco)

Yesterday I got a bonus: A pair of squirrels is nesting under our neighbor’s roof. One of them seems to be injured or sick, because it spent a good five minutes hardly moving, giving me plenty of time to sketch it.

I keep a pocket-size Stillman & Birn sketchbook and a couple of brown and black water-soluble colored pencils on the kitchen counter next to the window. Every time I walk through the kitchen, I glance at the feeder, and it’s easy to take a minute or two to work on a sketch. This winter the feeder has become my daily-sketching-habit lifesaver: If I’ve been cooped up all day, feeling restless with nothing to sketch, I can always draw a chickadee or two. A few minutes of drawing from life has also been an ideal antidote to the frustration I’ve been feeling about working exclusively from photos in my colored pencil class.

3/4/17 (gray squirrel)

2/18/17 (chickadee)

Rocky Shores of Procrastination

3-4-17 colored pencils, smooth Bristol

This week’s colored pencil class assignment is a rocky shore with water. Suzanne instructed us to pay attention to the patterns on the water’s surface, the direction of the flow, the reflected light and the subtle color variations. To draw the currents, I had to make lots and lots of small marks with a variety of blue, green and gray pencils. It was tempting to color in some areas solidly to get the values right, but then I’d lose the sparkles of water evident on every single ripple, no matter how tiny. (I know I say it every week, so I’ll resist declaring that this was the hardest homework yet!) I don’t know if it’s done, but I had to stop sometime.

While I was away in Cannon Beach I missed the lesson about reflections on water, which I regret, but it was also nice to have a break mid-quarter. Each assignment takes many hours over several days of work – a lot more intense desk work than I am used to.

Source photo

Although I knew from the get-go that the class would be focused on working from photos as a learning tool, and although I am certainly benefitting from the assignments, by the seventh week, I have to say I’m nonetheless frustrated. It was especially evident when I sat down to begin this week’s homework. Usually I have no problem simply hitting it, but this time I kept procrastinating by sharpening pencils, emptying the shavings, cleaning off my desktop, rearranging the desktop – basically doing everything except beginning! Trying to engage with photos taken by someone else is difficult at best. (It might be slightly better if I were to work from my own photos; I think we’ll be doing that at the end of the quarter.) The drawings feel like the exact opposite of the lively, spontaneous results I try so hard for (and love so much) in urban sketching. I know many artists work from photo sources as a matter of course, but it’s just not for me. 

Feathery

3/2/17 graphite

Apparently this type of tree is called a weeping sequoia. I don’t know much about it except that I see many intriguing examples all over Seattle – their long, drooping branches are monstrous, messy and strangely humorous. Last year I couldn’t resist sketching one I saw in Maple Leaf, and today I couldn’t resist this one in Wedgwood. I happened to have a freshly sharpened graphite pencil in my bag – just right for all those feathery fronds.