New Figures
Detail:
And some three-hour oil (yes oil) sketches I've done recently at some long-pose sessions.
A brief history of how I started to "curve" my sketches
When asked what kind of art I make, I say "I sketch what I see." That's it. I go out on location and sketch what I see. Or I stay home and sketch what I see. The "what I see" part is what's important to me. And that brings with it all sorts of other ideas to explore. Because what do we see, really? My style of sketching is a mixture of a few different approaches to observational art-making. There's the still-life/in-studio tradition where the artist narrows their focus on just a small portion of their field of view. There's plein-air landscape painting, where often the goal is to widen the field of view as much as possible and take in sweeping vistas. There's architectural and perspective drawing, where the challenge is to effectively depict human-made spaces with their corresponding geometry in a convincing way. And there's figurative art, where capturing the human form in one way or another is the goal. You can find examples of each of thes...
Hi Paul, My teacher once told me, figure drawing should spend more time in observation and you will need less time to draw. How do you distribute your time on life drawings? Is it very different than urban sketching on time management?
ReplyDeleteHi Alvin, I agree there is a certain amount of observation that one needs to do before drawing, but I don't know if I think there is a difference between the figure and anything else. I know I'm always running out of time with my figure sketches, so maybe I should try looking longer first ;) Of course, observation only goes so far. If you have never drawn before, you can spend all day looking at something, but that doesn't mean you will know how to draw it when you finally start.
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