"Rodin Forever Thinking." 2012 Digital.
This was a commission I completed yesterday (started and finished in 5 hours.) It wasn't supposed to be anything amazing, however after seeing some of Rodin's sculptures in person, I fell in love with the rawness of his figures, and especially the HANDS...oh what wonderful hands. So I hope I made it a little amazing.If you haven't noticed from my last few posts, I've been putting alot of thought into how I work artistically. If my barbaric explanations fail to inspire you, then at least it helps me understand how I develop my drawings best. Because of the illustration above, and my past few posts, I have felt the desire to publish in a simple/illustrated format HOW I develop my underdrawings...the scaffolding...the core of my illustrations.
Represented below are two schools of thoughts that I have learned/developed over the years. School one is DRAW/ERASE. School two is what I call DISTANCE METHOD, or to be more proper Traditional methods. I don't use one school or method exclusively, or even think about the fact I am using them. In fact quite often I use ALL of them even in just one drawing. These are just GREAT techniques for developed a good/solid underdrawing early on. This list is not meant to be exclusive...as I have a few others I forgot to include, but are at least my core. Honestly I am a CHOAS to order kinda guy, so you will notice I like to scribble and make a mess before things make sense.
My methods:
Traditional Methods / Distance Methods:
You probably noticed I used the word, "Impression" for all of my techniques. Impression is where the magic occurs; it is element X. For me it's the thing in my head that speaks and tells me things have to be a certain way...what's right or wrong. This type of magic is created and gets stronger by years of practice, studying professional artists, basic art classes, hard work, and more practice/failure/practice/failure/practice...and even then you just keep learning. It's kinda scary... The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know.
-Mike Blake.
Possible future posts?
-Thumbnail...small, med, large. general to more specific. Using the grid for live drawings?
-building up lines with short strokes.
-Using Distance method 2 - light to dark in conjunction with photoshop hue/saturation.
-Warp lines (have a fairly complete drawing.)
Really cool of you to share your process! I think I use a mixture of some of those aswell, and I have seen some new things that I might try. I usually go from lighter to dark, and sometimes I carve through the mess :P I have never considered erasing the less good parts! I will try that technique!
ReplyDeleteSo much nakedness :( Love the process, bet its funny to think about it as a process, when its like natural to you now. Like what I picture teaching kindergarten would be like.
ReplyDeleteDave, thanks for your comments. Jeremy, haha yah.
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