Mermaid drawing demo

Here's a mermaid I drew last night. I filmed myself drawing it, you can click here to watch me draw!

Figure Drawing

 OMG readers, what a long day. Woke up at 7, read a few chapters of Imagine, by John Lehrer, ran to the zoo, drew, hauled my butt to work, worked, ran to figure drawing, drew, crawled home, worked out (My biceps are so tired I could hardly shampoo my hair), and now i'm updating my blog. What a long day. Feels awesome to get a lot accomplished. :)

Until next time!
Tiffanny

Figure Drawing

 Went to figure drawing.

felt sick so I didn't stay long. Need to sleep off whatever the heck this is!! Feeling fatigued... frowny face!!!!!!

byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee :)

Hello Charlie! Figure Drawings

Hello Charlie! If you are reading this, It was really nice meeting you :) I just wanted to say thank you for encouraging me tonight. I wasn't going to post my drawings because I felt that I was struggling, but you seemed to like them enough that I decided to post them just for you!

It's nice to meet nice people.

Figure Drawing, plus a rant!!

These are all 10 minutes or less:

This week I stopped thinking about draftsmanship and focused on staying loose. My drawings seem to turn out better that way. It's weird. It's as if something else takes control of the drawing, not ME. I think when I "let go" it's like when a musician plays on feel, rather than thinking about every individual note and where to put their fingers. Soon, you've played the piece and you don't know how it happened. It's muscle memory.

It's very hard to push yourself in that zone, because you always want to control your work. It's how you feel mastery. You want to feel that you control every aspect of your art in look, feel, style and, if you're an animator, how the drawings move through space and time as well. We crave the control over our art, but really, control could be just knowing how to stay loose. Like the musician knowing when to close his eyes and just play. When to let the muscle memory take over.

I have a book called Alla Prima, by Richard Schmid. He says in the book that "Looseness is not a frivolous departure from control.... It arises from the freedom which comes from superb control." It's funny, that looseness looks like the opposite, doesn't it? Sometimes brevity, and the absence of rendering feels like the artist has nothing more to offer than a few carefully placed lines, but in this artist's humble opinion, those very few, select lines are the hardest ones to draw.

Anyway, back to the Schmid quote, *SIGH*, I would definitely never presume that I have superb control, but I do get better results being loose. I can't wait until I feel that the control is superb.

Until next time,
Tiffanny

Naked Lunch - Kelli Bland

 It's been a while since I got my butt back to Naked Lunch Figure Drawing for Animators. This session's model was Kelli Bland.

 The session is about 2 and a half hours of very short poses, from 1 minute - 7 minutes.

I'm glad I went because I got a fantastic ego boost by having the winning drawing for a free Naked Lunch session! Unfortunately I can't share the winning drawing because I gave it to our model as a token of my appreciation. :) I really hope she likes it! For her sake, I hope to become rich and famous, so that the drawing I gave her might someday be worth something. I'm nice like that! (hehehe)

I hope you enjoyed my drawings! Thank you for visiting!
Tiffanny

Short Pose Session, AVAA, Freakin' Cool Aztec Lady

We had a new model today! I didn't catch her name, but I overheard her say she's an Aztec descendant. She was gorgeous!!

10-15 minutes...  The one on the left was actually really hard, because it was a straight, symmetrical pose. If you're an artist reading my blog, tell me how you deal with such a straight on pose? Do you move? or force some direction into it even though you don't see it?

5 minutes...

1 minute...

Glad to be figure drawing again. Love to do it. Will see you soon, I'm writing a new stupid story. It's pretty stupid, but I think it's funny, so I hope you will think so too :)

Tiff

ps. I was listening to "When you Wish Upon A Star" while I was writing this post.  I really liked Disney cartoons when I was a kid, but I really love it more now. I really appreciate all the time and care everyone put into a hand crafted movie. I hope that art form never dies.

Short Pose Session, AVAA, Karin

5 min poses... (my cat walked on the paper while i was taking a picture of it. I think it helps to show the scale of my drawings :)

 10

15

20

Short Pose Session, AVAA, Red-headed lady

Yay! New model last night. I draw on really big paper when I go to figure drawing (18" x 24") so I have a hard time with proportions because I don't see the entire figure at once on my paper. I'm on a donkey easel, so stepping back is not too easy (It's more of a scooch and lean-back thing that I do). Still, I LOVE drawing on big paper because I can really use my entire arm to draw. Big sweeping lines are fun. Adds energy (theoretically. In practice though, my figures still look a bit stiff)
25 minute pose...

 I've been really working on understructure before I put details on. You can really see the frame this figure was built on in this one and the next one.
10 minutes...

 5 minutes

Well, that's all for now! Hopefully I can get my readers something in color soon. :)
Thank you so much for visiting. HAVE A NICE DAY!!!!!!!!
Tiffanny

5 Ways to Prepare for Zoo Drawing

OK, I plan on going to the zoo this weekend, weather permitting. So I've started preparing by drawing my dogs. I prepare many other ways, and I've created a list I hope you may find helpful.

1) I prepare by browsing through animal drawing books. My favorite authors for this are Joe Weatherly, Ken Hultgren and David Coleman.
2) I watch my BBCs Earth or Life DVD, and sketch some animals while they are moving. This prepares me for the zoo trip where animals wont hold still.
3) I look at my animal action figures from Schleich, I draw them in a pose that is different from how they are sculpted to prepare me for different poses a real animal will have.
4) I go to a natural history museum and draw taxidermy.
5) I draw my dog and cats. I try to draw them moving as well as relaxed.

Now that you have mentally prepared yourself with these tips, you will have a more productive trip! :)

I hate spending hours at the zoo and then ending up with crappy drawings. Best to prepare to make the most out of your admission fee! So, I hope to update with some zoo drawings by next week. I hope you will visit me again.

This is Honker, my short-haired dog. Because of this, you can really see her definition. She's perfect for anatomy study.

 This is Gracie. True to her name, she's very graceful, in movement and features. She's foxy-red and has a deer-like frame, with long thin legs.

 This is Frannie, a friend's dog. She's hard to draw! I'm so unfamiliar with her.

Short Pose Session, AVAA, Reina

 Reina was booked as model again today at the AVAA. Once upon a time, someone commented that I only draw pretty young thin models and that I ought to expand. I soooo agree! I wish I did have a choice in the matter, but I'm not the one booking models! The recession has absolutely, without a doubt, hit us hard financially, but I'm optimistic that next year, I may be able to hire my own models. Need to practice males too. Not that Reina isn't awesome to draw, of course. And kudos to her for being in great shape.
25 minute pose...

 15 minute pose...

5 minute pose...

And that is that!
Hope you keep on visiting me and please comment if you find some bad habits. I'm aware of the thunder-thigh tendency. I continue to fight that... :)

Have a great day!!
Tiffanny

Short Pose Session, AVAA, Reina

 I was late to the session thanks to having to run to the store to get more Cad Red Light. (Just in case I felt like painting at 2 am later.) Anyway, I was late so I had to be in the way way back standing, and I CANNOT draw standing. My deltoids are too weak and feeble. I felt like I didn't have good control over my pencil. That's my excuse anyway :) Only two drawings I can post today that wont make you gag.

Short Pose Session, AVAA, drawings of Emily, Reilly Method

 25 minute pose:

 15 minute pose:

10:

5:

You may notice the lack of 1-minute gesture drawings this time. That's because I totally blew it. I don't know where my head was, but the harder I tried, the worse it looked! 1-minute poses get my adrenalin going. There's so much to draw and so little time. Anyway, I calmed down when we hit 10 minute poses. For the 10-minutes and up poses, I kept the Reilly Method in my mind the whole time. (The Reilly Method is described in the Anatomy issue of Imagine FX, page 18. It's an incredibly elegant method, but I still need to practice more, more, more.)
Anyway, I do have some bad tendencies when I draw. One is to break the hands and feet into components, rather than having them flow from the arms/legs. I'm working to fix that. Can you spot any other bad tendencies? Mistakes I keep repeating over and over? Symbol drawings to note? (For the non-artistic, a symbol drawing is like drawing what you know, not what you see, which appear again and again in your drawing.)
OK, time to hit the spin bike. I engorged myself like a tick this weekend with ice cream, brownies, and a chocolate cheesecake from Kerby Lane Cafe.

Tiffanny
Ps. OMG! Sold my first print ! Completely unexpected.

Short Pose Session, AVAA, drawings of Reina

15 minutes...

30 minutes...

5 minutes...

1 minute...

Why are my gesture drawings nice and fluid and my longer poses so dang stiff-feeling?? (especially the 2nd drawing). I mean, I know the model isn't being as dynamic, but still, shouldn't I be able to make her less robotic-looking? If you have any tips, please help!!
Tiffanny