Nocturnal Artist: 2008

After spells of drawing aimlessly I begin to question myself. I want to know why I've been repeatedly drawing the same, meaningless things. I want to move on to bigger, better artworks, but I don't have the time or materials. Why keep drawing flowers, landscapes, and fruit?

Because practice gives us the skills we need to be successful in later projects.

The experience from studies on anatomy or value, line or perspective will be there to support your work when the inspiration does strike. That's when you can focus on your idea, instead of struggling with the mechanics.

It's an elementary concept, but sometimes when work gets boring a reminder becomes necessary. I just wish I had remembered this when my instructor had me drawing a billion bikes last year.

What better time is there to practice drawing faces than a boring class?

I just scanned an image, resized it, and then lost it some how. I would say that's a pretty good indication that this nocturnal artist should try to get some sleep.

A drawing of a pumpkin that I did when I was working in the library. It was sitting on the counter beside me, and work was pretty slow that day so I couldn't resist!

Passing the time in one of my classes.

I was sitting outside one day, drawing these leaves. Someone I really adored walked by, and being timid, I jumped up from my seat to go somewhere else. Of course, I did so with such disgrace that I actually lost the pen I was using.

I was downstairs brushing my teeth, and started to feel a little hyper. I saw my reflection in the window, and started to dance around. Badly, I might add. Chewbacca could probably dance better than I was dancing.

There I was, shaking my goods at 1AM in the morning, when I saw that my neighbor was looking out his window, and at me.

I stopped instantly, my face turned bright red, and I walked out of the room without even closing the curtains.

I'm just glad this happened before I took a shower rather than afterward, if you know what I mean.

I was listening to King Crimson's Moonchild when I did this sketch.

This is a drawing I found in my sketchbook from my senior year in high school.

I've always enjoyed drawing with Sharpie, so here is a blank CD that I drew on just for fun!

I did this quick sketch earlier tonight. I'm not entirely sure where I was going with it.

The drawing was done with blue and black ballpoint pen, and watercolor pencils. It is on recycled paper.

This is my drawing final, but certainly not my final drawing. It's really too bad I can't afford a better camera right now.

My professor was unsuccessful in finding a model for our class, so he had us draw from our imaginations instead. It's really quite difficult. When drawing from life, everything is directly before you. This involves a different kind of concentration.

This was my drawing midterm. The only requirement was that I had to use some form of perspective, which I applied by having the flute get progressively smaller on the paper. I'm estimating that I spent about four hours on this one. I got a pretty good grade.

I was walking outside, and the wind almost completely destroyed some of my paper. Since I was waiting for my shift in the library to start, I decided to use the terracotta colored chalk for the first time on the damaged paper. Of course, I drew another eye.

It's really quite amusing just how many people will completely ignore a person when she is drawing in a hallway. As I was drawing, a few people would glance and quickly look away, and some intentionally avoided looking at my work. As soon as I set down my sketch board and started to put my supplies away, people started to stare but didn't say anything.

We act like such strangers...

This was the quicker sketch for the day. I worked on another one for quite a while, but I completely botched it. Not used to the 3/4 view. I haven't messed up that badly for a while. Oh well. With the good comes the bad.

My last class involved profile drawings, and instruction on drawing eyes. That was a slow night for me. I didn't manage to progress as far as I usually do. The image above was a short value study. If I recall correctly, it took half an hour.

I did discover that newsprint is a better surface for Conté than the white drawing paper that we usually use. The image above is on the newsprint. The image below was a quick eye drawing on the white paper.

I was so happy to be able to draw an eye in class!

I have a terribly small amount of experience painting, so I've been doing some practice work just to get used to the medium.

The painting above is a monochromatic painting (using only green and white) of my houseplant. I used acrylic paint on a simple sketch pad that my friend Ryan bought me a few years ago.

It's not complete, but rather abandoned. I could spend forever working on a single painting if I allowed myself. I decided it would be best to post it and move on to other projects.

A friend of mine said that I should name this painting Robert Plant.

My drawing class has recently moved on to drawing humans and studying values rather than perspective. That said, I should be updating more often with some of my classwork.

The image displayed above is a working drawing from class today. It was my first time using Conté crayon.

This is the first drawing I've finished in a while. Unfortunately, a great deal of the detail in the fingers is not visible because of my scanner, and the binding of my sketchbook.

Despite the quality of the scan, I'm fairly pleased with this drawing. It's just the product of having a sketchbook, mechanical pencil, and rather uneventful sociology class.

Nocturnal Artist

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