Life Drawing Early 2018

Holy crap, it's been almost a year since I posted any art here. That cannot stand, so here are some pieces I've done at my weekly figure drawing sessions. The piece at the top of this post is a watercolor on Canson sketchbook paper. Turned out surprisingly well, all things considered. The rest is mostly work in graphite pencil.

This last one is a five minute drawing of another artist while the model was on break.

I'll try not to be gone so long next time.

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More Life Drawing, Spring 2017

The last few drawings I've made at my weekly life drawing sessions have been pretty good. Likenesses are a bugaboo for me, so the fact that all of these models have distinct faces that actually look like them in my newest drawings pleases me no end. I realize that verisimilitude is not the aim of art (if it was, the king of the artists would the photographer), and I realize that any drawing made from life is necessarily a composite image because even the most disciplined of models will move during the session, and the artist themselves will move, too, but a good likeness is always a goal for me. I'm a representational artist by temperament, so it's a matter of pride. Anyway, these are all drawn with a graphite pencil (a number 2 pencil, as it so happens, rather than a snooty art pencil). The above drawing is especially satisfying for me because it's the first time I've drawn this model and I got her in one, awkwardly posed feet and all.

This drawing and the one at the head of this post are very similar. I was in the same spot for both of them and the prop set-up hadn't changed much.

I'm particularly happy with this one. I mostly got everything right, even within my method of creative scribbling. I'm really happy with her face. I've just been feeling it lately, I guess.

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The Great Race of Yith

I started drawing when I was a kid because I wanted to draw monsters and dinosaurs. I get to do that for money sometimes as an adult, so who's to say I'm a failure in life, eh? I don't draw monsters for pleasure very often anymore, but sometimes I do. I'm thinking of doing a series of monsters as a medical fundraiser later this year, but that's the cart before the horse right now. Anyway, here's a drawing of a monster I did this morning.

This is a member of The Great Race of Yith, from Lovecraft's "The Shadow out of Time." The description of this thing is ridiculous, and consequently, most depictions I've seen are ridiculous (although one enterprising cosplayer made a dress and some other stuff to play as a Yith. I liked that). So the challenge was to make this look NOT ridiculous. I don't know that I've succeeded, but it was a fun challenge. Pencil on crappy drawing paper.

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This blog is supported on Patreon by wonderful subscribers. If you like what I do, please consider pledging your own support. It means the world to me.

Various Life Drawings Spring 2017

Here are some more life drawings. I haven't been attending as often as I'd like this spring, owing to a persistent respiratory infection. I'm slowly easing back into it, but it always feels like I've forgotten how to draw when I've been away for any amount of time. Anyway, these are all pencil drawings.  The drawing above has a nice sense of geometry to it. Not quite cubist, but architectural none the less.

More Late Winter Life Drawings

Here are some more life drawings from my weekly sessions this winter. I'm getting pretty familiar with drawing our regular models, so my likenesses are getting pretty accurate.

 

More Life Drawing, Winter 2016

Here are some more drawings from my weekly figure drawing session. The above drawing is another in a long series of awkward poses. I'm an absolute champion at finding difficult foreshortening poses. This, more than a lot of my drawings, is an example of my technique with a pencil, which is basically creative scribbling.

Fall Figure Drawings

Here are some of the drawings I've made at the weekly figure drawing sessions I attend every Thursday. The drawing at the head of this post is conte crayon on 96lb Canson drawing paper. The others, below, are all graphite on the same paper

This last drawing was done a bit larger than the others on 80lb Blick drawing paper.

All of these drawings are available for sale at my Etsy store.

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This blog is supported on Patreon by wonderful subscribers. If you like what I do, please consider pledging your own support. It means the world to me.

Collaboration is Fun

The Madames des Comiques group on Facebook has been doing an ink exchange this year, where various lady-type artists submit pencils for the other participants to ink. I've been really enjoying the process of making art from other people's drawings, and I've REALLY been digging the results of other people working over my own drawings. The above piece was inked by Ana King over this drawing:

Meanwhile, I was assigned this drawing by Elizabeth Schweitzer.

The point of this exercise is to stretch my artistic horizons. I don't usually work digitally--I don't really like working digitally--but it's a skill I need to develop and practice, so I decided to do this in Photoshop (rather than my usual default to Adobe Illustrator for digital work). This is the result:

I'm not sure of what I think about this result, but I'm glad I did it. It was fun.

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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.

St. Valentine's Art Dump

Here's some art I've made since last we spoke. I apologize if you've seen some of this before on my social networks.

The above piece is the first live figure drawing I've done since December. It's conte crayon, which I haven't used in forever. I used to love conte crayon, but somewhere along the way I fell out of the habit of using it. It has a rich, velvety darkness of tone that I love, even though I didn't take full advantage of it here. There's a certain creeping monumentalism in my figure drawing lately, which is even more prominent in the second drawing I did at this session from the same pose. This is a more technically correct drawing in graphite. I like it better.

Next up, we have a quick sketch of Oliver Cromwell I did in prep for a comics project I have on the back burner (part of my crippling idea debt). The brush I used for this was dying, but it still had some use left in it.

Next, a couple of fun drawings I inked over other people as part of the monthly "Ink Exchange" run by the Madames des Comiques group from St. Louis. The first was inked over Christina Steenz Stewart, the second over Tara Coble. These were fun to do. I like collaboration.

This was my contribution to this month's event:

Which is a character I'm using in a comic I'm currently drawing. Here's the first panel of the first page of that comic. It came out quite nice:

Finally, there's this, which is something I started for a warm up and got caught up in drawing the snakes. Medusa and her sisters--I think this is actually Eurayale rather than Medusa, but it doesn't really matter--are subjects I keep returning to. This is for sale in my Etsy store.

Enjoy.

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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.

Male Nude (back on the drawing horse)

I finally got back to a life drawing session yesterday. I was late so my pose opportunities were limited. In truth, I'm kind of happy with this angle, as in your face as it is. Pencil on Canson sketchbook paper.

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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.

Late August Art Dump

I've been making a lot of art this month, but a lot of it is stuff I can't show. That hasn't stopped me from going to my regular figure drawing sessions, though, and here are a bunch drawings from those sessions I attended this month. The drawing at the head of this post is pencil and almost dry Copic markers on sketchbook paper. Dry copics have their uses, but I think I need to refill mine.

More Recent Life Drawings...

Star, graphite pencil on watercolor paper

I've been posting a lot of life drawings lately. The reason for this is twofold: first, the stuff I would ordinarily be posting--stuff for my current illustration clients--is under a non-disclosure agreement until publication. Second, I'm really digging my life drawing sessions. Anyway, here are some recent ones.

Still More Life Drawings

Some more drawings from my weekly life drawing sessions. Col-erase Prismacolor on Blick sketchbook paper and pencil on Blick scetchbook paper. Pretty scribbly. I tend to be an impatient artist.

Male Nude

After months of female models, we finally got a male model for my life drawing group. I was pretty happy to be drawing this guy. He had great muscle definition and it wasn't a reclining pose for a change.

Pencil on sketchbook paper.

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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.

Always with the Negative Waves, Moriarty!

This is a piece I did for one of my Kickstarter backers. Very different from the other Kickstarter art, but the backer in question is a very dear friend and wanted a piece with Oddball from Kelly's Heroes. I'm torn between wanting to ink this and sell prints and the sure suspicion that I'll screw it up if I try. I'm really happy with the likeness on this piece, which is something with which I often struggle. This is going out as is, per request of my backer, who has seen it and likes it this way. You may not have seen the last of this, though.

Pencil on Bristol board.

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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.

More Life Drawing

Here are two more drawings from the life drawing sessions I've been attending, drawn on different days from different models. The first is graphite on sketchbook paper. The second is brush and ink on watercolor paper.

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I'm trying out Patreon as a means of funding my blogs. They don't have a widget yet, so this link will just have to do. If you like my writing and art and if you'd like to support Krell Laboratories and Christianne's Art and Comics, please come on over and pledge. Thanks.