Artist Death Grip + San Antonio Wildlife Ranch + Figure Drawing Practice

Why take the time to draw from life when there's a billion photographs of animals and people? The main reason is that cameras flatten and distort pictures. It's impossible to see dimensionality with just one lens. You need two eyes to see depth. Your understanding of the forms are truly better when you draw from life. This comes in handy when you're doing actual animal design from imagination, which I do quite a bit at work. It's so freakin' hard though, the animals sure love to move.

showed my boss my drawings, and he said I was "bold" drawing with a pen. If only he knew, I'm a scared little girl when I draw, especially in public. But I overcome as best as I can. I don't doubt that my public audience understands the difficulty, so I really shouldn't be scared. My main audience are usually kids going "WOW SHES DRAWING THE __insert animal name here___", and let me tell you, children are brutally honest. They will tell you if you've failed.

 I got to practice my Artist Death Grip today.

target acquired....

 approaching target...

DEATHGRIP!!!!! target eliminated. I killed the poor llama.

Now me and the sheep can run away together, without pesky llama in the way. dude look at my boney ass chest. when did that happen. probably the other day when i turned into an old hag. (34th birthday)

ok here are some figure drawings from last week:

I guess that's about it.

Watercolor - Gesture

This serves both as my "Illustration Friday" and "Watercolor Wednesdays" piece. The Illustration Friday word is "gesture", hence.......

"Watercolor Wednesday's" topic is "Baby's First....." Well, if you've followed my blog you know that I'll find any excuse to put some sort of animal in the piece, so I decided that the dog can be baby's first guardian angel. I purposely positioned the baby's swirl hair over the puppy serve as puppy's halo. If you look super close, you'll see her dog tag has little wings drawn on it, designating her very important job. Here's a closeup:

Anyway, I really dont know if the puppy succeeds at keeping the stupid baby from getting attacked by the blender. I will leave that up to your imagination :) hehehe You tell me what you think happens!!!!!!

Tiff
PS, dog was modeled after my dog Gracie, a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, who is actually a pretty cruelly indifferent dog. I once took her to Barton Springs to play water fetch with her. I decided to test and see what she would do if I pretended to drown. As I "drowned" she picked up her ball and took it to my husband instead. She didn't even think twice!!

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

Gesture Drawings of Gracie and Honker

Well, the figure drawing session was canceled yesterday for some reason, so I decided to draw my dogs.
This is my dog Honker sleeping. She's compact and muscular which makes her great for anatomy studies. About Honker; Honker doesn't understand ownership and playing with toys. She much prefers fishing and hunting outside. She has caught squirrels, rabbits, and fish. We didn't teach her that, but I think since her previous owners neglected her she just learned to hunt to stay alive. She is an expert at catching grasshoppers out of the air. As a result, when we toss popcorn in the air for her she catches them with ease. Anyway, the problem with dogs is that they get uneasy being stared at, so she crawled into her crate after these few drawings...

These next ones are of Gracie. She doesn't like being stared at either, so she's always rotating, always facing away from me. Luckily I got a few good ones. While Honker is squat and muscular, Gracie is built more like a ballet dancer. She's long and lean but also strong. She's undefeated at Tug-of-war vs other dogs despite her tiny frame. She isn't a hunter like Honker but plays non-stop. The only thing she has "hunted" was a turtle, whom she brought back to us alive and well. We put him back in the lake. Unlike Honker, Gracie can't catch for shit. We throw popcorn at her and she kind of braces herself for impact, then eats it off the floor.

I love my two dogs!
Tiffanny

AVAA Short Poses

15 minutes...

This was going to be a 20 minute pose but the model gave up. We're guessing it's between 10-15 minutes

10 minutes

1 minute...

Until next time!
Tiffanny

AVAA - Cammy

Conte crayon drawings. This model has Sandra Bullock's face!

20 minutes

26 minutes...

10 minutes...

5 minutes

AVAA - Michelle

Decided to give Conte crayons another try. I had big problems with Conte before because of my odd way of gripping a pencil. I would grip it in such a way that I couldn't see what I was drawing - my hand would be in the way, engulfing the little conte stick. Well, I got a pencil holder for it, so now I can see what I was doing. What a difference it makes (obviously)!

less than 30 minutes...

15 minutes

10 minutes

5 minutes

And that's it!

In other news, 9 hours from now I take my citizenship test to become a bonefide American. I can't wait!

Tiffanny

Naked Lunch - Chelsea

I wish there was a Naked Lunch session every week. Nothing sharpens you drawing skills like short-duration gesture drawing.
The premise of Naked Lunch is short poses, 7 minutes and less.

7 minutes...

(She was wearing a rubber dino mask and a chef's hat on this pose... I thought I had to say in in case you were thinking... What the?!)

(The model was good at projecting the right attitude that matches the pose)

3 minutes...

(The dino mask, again...)

1 minute...

Looking forward to the next session,
Tiffanny