-
I'll admit that in the past I have been guilty of thinking of colored pencil art as colorful and bright and not necessarily able to be coupled with serious subjects or moody narratives. But that was my own bias. As I've spent time looking at sketchbooks of draftsmen creating colored pencil art...
-
I'm an artistic omnivore to be sure, but there is really nothing I love more and respond to more than pencil drawings. I know, the humble pencil and paper seems so simple, so basic. But what some forego and forget as too elementary, I see as essential. Yes, starting with beginner pencil drawing lessons...
-
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But no one said that picture needed to be a photograph. As an art director, I've found that sometimes pen and ink drawings or pencil drawing illustration is simply the best way to tell a story, particularly a conceptual one. Scotty Reifsnyder's illustration...
-
Almost every artist I know who depicts people or creates portraits has spent time painting from photographs or drawing from them. It may not be how they develop a work foremost, but it is a useful method, especially when you want to capture a likeness and don't have the luxury of having your model...
-
I'm totally a sci-fi junkie and H.R. Giger is truly a master artist in the genre of fantastic realism. I first came across his work through his designs for Alien . Lately, with the release of Prometheus , his art came up on my radar again. Now, his work is...out there. His style is so unique that...
-
I'm not a napping kind of person. When I'm up, I'm up and I want to be doing something or on the go. That's usually the kind of body drawing that I'm pulled to as well--muscles torqued, body indicating action, and an underlying sense of movement. That being said, I do recognize and...
-
I don't care what anyone says, color is king. It makes everything better--more appealing and lively. Oftentimes in an artist's drawing practice, a sense of color takes a backseat to the black, white, and gray of charcoal or graphite. But that doesn't necessarily have to be the way it is....
-
A few weeks ago an artist friend of mine rotated his wrist and made a wincing face after he had finished working on a quick pencil drawing , and it made me realize that drawing isn't just fun and games. It can cause strain in the hand, wrist, elbow, shoulder, neck, and back for many artists who work...
-
Cube figures allow me to focus on the basic shapes of the body. This can lead to a better understanding of the body's form and the creation of works that are incredibly natural, such as Lea Colie Wight's drawing, Kate , conte on paper, 17 x 23. I was always the kid who was great at multiplication...
-
You may recall that a few months ago I described my horror at learning from an instructor that we would be working on a small drawing of a facial feature for 20 weeks . Novice that I am, 20 weeks seemed an inordinate length of time to spend on a small graphite drawing. Was I ever wrong. I not only did...
-
Train Tracks by Valerio D'Ospina, 2011, oil on melamined MDF, 30 x 24. Some artists such as Jackson Pollock discover and use their own visual language to communicate with the world, and this singular voice takes them through an entire career of putting oil on canvas. Others—Picasso for instance—pass...
-
Kinder Love by Jason Bard Yarmosky, 2011, pencil drawing, 18 x 24. Frontal Study of Naked Man by Leonardo, 1503- 09, pen and ink drawing, 9 1/4 x 5 3/4. Looking East by Kerry Brooks, colored pencil drawing. I'm excited to report that the fall issue of Drawing is here—it hits newsstands November...
-
The Grimaces by Louis-Leopold Boilly, 1823, lithograph, 13 1/8 x 10. A few weeks ago I was in the Met and saw "Infinite Jest," an exhibition of drawings and prints that explore satire and caricature from the Italian Renaissance to the present. I enjoyed the show, walking around and chuckling...
-
Drawing after the sculpture The Cylinder Man by Eliot Goldfinger by Jon deMartin, 2009, pencil drawing. Drawing for Epiphany by Michael Aviano, 2009, charcoal drawing, 39 x 32. Going from "the cylinder man" to a fully-realized figure is a matter of many things, but one is definitely an ability...
-
I combined not just artist and model (self-portraiture), but artist-model-athlete in my Life Drawing Gymnastics series. In my Life Drawing Gymnastics series, I attempted to do more than simply draw from life , but rather allowed life to be a large part of the drawing process. I combined not just artist...