A couple months ago I inventoried all my old artwork, threw out about 90% and photographed what remained. I thought I would post a few of those old drawings here because, well…I am a little behind on scanning my sketchbook. And also I really miss the college days, so why not take a trip down memory lane.
These drawings are all from around 1999-2001 (I think).
This drawing here is a quick five minute gesture drawing. We always did a few two or five minute gesture drawings at the beginning of class to get warmed up. I remember one guy once compared them to practicing scales on the piano. I usually just threw them away when I was done, but I couldn’t part with this one. I was really proud of it then and I still am now. I wish the drawings I did these days had that kind of line quality.
Here is another fairly quick drawing. This one probably took ten or twenty minutes. I wish I had done a little more work on the chair.
Here is a longer drawing. Black and white conte on toned paper. This one probably took about 2 hours. I remember the night I did this drawing. I was really proud of it at the time. Back then I was pretty obsessed with life drawing, but I was also really struggling with it. I was okay, but I had some really gifted friends that just put me to shame (and still do). At one point I was taking 6-9 hours of life drawing per day and rarely cranked out anything I liked. The night I did this one I felt like I was finally starting to get it. Incidentally I don’t really like this one so much anymore. Terrible line quality, and the hair sucks. I still can’t draw hair to save my life.
In this drawing we were told to make a box of some sort on the page and do a drawing that focuses on composition. So I went with the good ol’ triangle. I love triangles. Also, I always loved drawing the female models from the side when they had their arm up. The shadows would always fall in an interesting and beautiful way that was fun to draw.
Ah, here we have the elusive male model. In art school the ratio of female to male models was about five to one, and even when we did have a male model it was often a somewhat skeezy older guy. So on the rare occasion when we actually had youngish male model it was pretty great. I remember that the checkerboard way in which the light was falling on this guy made for a fun but very challenging drawing.
Here is another female from the side with a raised arm. I could draw these all day. I’m not sure if I intentionally focused on the arm and head and let the rest gesture out on purpose, or if I just ran out of time and tried to pass it off as intentional.
Another black and white conte on toned paper. Not much to comment on this one except that I love the triangle shape that is created by the jaw line and underside of the chin when people tilt their head back in that way.
Here is another one of the same model. I think this one took me three hours. My teacher Jerry was big on creating shadow with marks. Hatching, cross-hatching, whatever. Mark making was very important. Only pansies create shadow by blending.
sketchbookfactory 