Nocturnal Artist

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

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 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.

I have always enjoyed watching people paint or draw, so I decided that it might be interesting to document my own progression.















I first started with a rough outline of an eye. That is what I usually start with if I'm not certain of what to paint or draw. The rest comes to me eventually.

Sadly, the color in these images is slightly off. My walls should be a shade of lavender.















Next, I started to work in greater detail. Most obvious in the image above is that I've added the lashes, but I also did some shading and touched up on the eyelids. I also seem to have lost my blue paint, so the iris is now mostly green.

I've been told that I shouldn't paint in sections, but it's simply what works for me. I would also like to note that the dripping paint is intentional.

I'm not sure when I'll be able to paint again, so here is a close-up of what I've done so far: