Ideally, you should have a retreat. Don't scoff, that's an invaluable resource! Some quiet place that puts you at ease from stress, whatever works for you. A friend of mine has The Grotto, an religious idyll. It's quite beautiful there. Me, I have no place like that. It's one thing having to deal with personal stressors...it's another thing to be in a situation wherein you're not being allowed to deal with anything, not given the space you need to cope or work things out. Putting it mildly...it's not conducive to work.
Legos blocks! I have four siblings, they have kids, their kids have kids. That mean there are always Legos around! Not only are they still fun to build with, they are also a nice way to frame and support physical builds of all sizes and shapes.
Noted before, I'm running out of Woodsies - those thin dowels. I can't get them in bulk from Amazon, and there I have to pay shipping - adding two or three times the cost of a bag off the shelf at Michael's! Stirring sticks for coffee, OTOH, are free and available just about anywhere. I'll be going over the whole thing with putty anyway, all I need do is fill in the structure. That empty space in the center, that's where the dining room goes.
Kind of a "no duh", but the internet really is an endless resource. It's getting me to put my stuff out there...or rather, it's getting me to make some stuff to put out there. Next week I'll be meeting someone to talk about a drawing. Through the local library's online catalog I can get books on all subjects for free, or order what I need. The two art stores in my neighborhood that carried 0.3mm lead both closed, but Amazon has it which saves a busride downtown. My scanner is almost capturing my drawings right again, now that I've dowwnloaded software to replace the old.
It's good for bumper-sticker inspirational thinking too. These are hitting me lately:
So. Flash drives are good too, as long as you keep track of them. I saved a bunch of good stuiff to flash drive recently...and promptly lost the thing. There was a progress collage I had of a drawing of Dana that I started a few years ago. It contained nine or ten scans of the drawing, each one two hours further along. I can't find that image anywhere now. Shame, it was great illustration of my process.
As mentioned in an earlier post, my scanner washes out much of my pencil shading. I've re-installed software to manage the scans, but it's limited to adjusting brightness and contrast...the image is closer to what I've drawn but the subtleties are still not there.
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| Dana Cooper |
Also as noted before, I've encountered some difficulty finishing the drawing. I was just then trying to get back into drawing, and I made some mistakes. One, I didn't think to use a barrier between my hand/arm and the paper, so the edges have yellowed. Some of that I can crop, and it will be okay though it does throw off the composition: the relationship between Dana and the space surrounding her. It's not inappropriate...I think sometimes the world does close in around her, and once that was my own fault. I'm sorry, Dana.
The yellowing on the right edge is too heavy to be removed, and I can only hope to disguise it with heavy shading. Then again, I was never sure what to do about a background as the only light areas of the original photograph are her skin. It's very striking, and was my original choice, but I love the flowing shapes that frame the bottom contours of the drawing. So, unmarked space at the bottom...but that doesn't work well for her hair. Her hair, that's where I have trouble...it's a small photo and the shapes in her hair are too difficult for me to map out. So I'm having to roughly recreate...ahm...not a duplication of what I see but the essence of it. Block the rest of it in as you see on the left, get a general placement of flow, then start darkening it. At some point I have to put away the photo and see what the drawing itself needs in order to look alive. it's incredibly difficult to psych myself up to this aspect of this particular drawing. it's one reason progress has been so slow, added to the other technical aspect which was discouraging.
This is on cardstock. Another difficult drawing I'm doing is on a page from a drawing tablet. I'm finding that I vastly prefer the cardstock for it's smoother texture which captures my shading better, but that the drawing paper is less prone to tearing when I get heavy with that fine tip. I am needing to experiment with using wider gauges of lead for heavy shading.
You'll have noticed that the shaded area of the background looks out of place. That's because it was shaded with a regular #2 pencil, and is only temp work. If necessary I'll erase it before using a mechanical pencil, but I;m hoping instead to use the mechanical to supplement the regular pencil. It's an experiment, I'm hoping to arrive at a look that looks integral to the texture of the whole but still sets it apart slightly from the rest.
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| Laurie from Nike This is the kind of texture I'd like to develop for hair. I like this look a lot. No contours, pure shape! Very dynamic, lively. |
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| Lori Hamilton Similar to the roadblock I faced with hair, I got hung up on every stitch on Lori's sweater having to be exactly right. She doesn't entirely look herself in this photo, taken by someone else. Pro photographer, I believe she said, Lori was posing for him at the beach. The wind was blowing the sand into her eyes! |
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