Life Drawing Dump

Week 2 of my three week live model workshop is in the bag, so here are some of my  drawings from Thursday:

2 minute drawings

3 minute drawings

5-15 minute drawings

5-15 minute drawings

When I do drawings from live models I always try to keep myself excited by imagining them as characters or doing real things. Sometimes I will put costumes on them or transform them in some way. Sometimes I will alter the pose a little and use it as a reference instead of limiting myself to the model's repertoire of poses. (Some models are better than others but you need to make the most of each session!)

I've also been really detecting a pattern in my weaknesses and I think I need to strengthen my understanding of the male body. Now that I'm done with my 250 feet I think I'm going to try to knock out a bunch of fast figure drawings of men from photographs. At least there is the MLG Columbus StarCraft stream to keep me company while I draw... ;) Wish me luck!

New Life drawings

Some more quick drawings from my workshop that came out pretty decent:

2 minute pose

5 minute pose

10 minute pose

10 minute pose

15 minute pose, clothing from imagination

New Life Drawings

I've been attending a workshop during the intercession, trying to get some more life drawing in when I have time. I like the fast gesture drawings because it really forces you to identify the core components of the body fast. If you fail to get the important parts it's pretty obvious, but that's the great thing about quick poses! If you mess it up another chance is only a minute away.

Some 2 minute quick poses

10 minute pose

I've been working on using my imagination to add costumes to nude poses on the fly. I like to just take the feeling of the pose and improvise, taking an extra 3-5 minutes to sketch in some details and costuming

Costumes drawn over nude quick poses from imagination

In effort to continue to try to toughen up my style I've also been doing some quick heads and faces. The progress feels slow at times, but it's fun to try and improve. I find I make a lot of default shapes and lines that I don't really like, so it almost feels like spring cleaning in a way.

Some more successful than others...

Starting a blog, Character design, Dragon Age

I've had blogs in the past, but I've decided to start one to post and talk about my work. I'm going to try to post work incrementally on here and use this space as an opportunity to talk about my process and what I enjoy about drawing. I guess I'll start things off with a bit of a dump.

3-5 minute life drawings with a little imaginative editing

3-5 minute life drawings with a Star Wars theme

3-5 minute life drawings - she had a sword and everything!

I wish I had more opportunities to draw male models

This semester I've been focusing on refining my ability to stylize my life drawings. I'm going for a more graphic, harder-edged look. It's taking some time to trim out the soft curves in my work, but I'm liking the progress. Drawing from models is really helpful, it reminds me how dynamic the body can really be. 

Faces of Dragon Age

I've also been working on my character design. To springboard my efforts I've been working with some existing IP that I'm enthusiastic about. I've enjoyed the Dragon Age games, so I thought that would be a fun place to start. I'm pretty much a fan of anything Bioware touches, so playing around with these characters is like joyriding in a Ferrari 458 Italia.

Leliana, why you such a BOSS?

I also did some redesigns for Alistair, Morrigan and Anders. Overall it was a fun little project, and I really enjoyed the chance to do some armor and interesting costume elements.

Alistair, owning some face.

Morrigan, ready for action.

Anders, making some bad decisions. Typical.

Games are something I'm really passionate about. While this style is very 2D animation, I'm hoping to work on some more conceptual designs in the future for other games related projects.