Back to Basics - Sketch Dump

Last semester I had to take a basic level art class- Drawing 111, which is probably the most elementary drawing class you can take in college. Even though I've been drawing for a long time, there was no way around it since I didn't have the requirement filled. It was a good class and as long as I was drawing something, I didn't really care what it was. I actually don't think I've ever sat down and just drawn a simple still life with basic shapes and so it was surprisingly refreshing to draw really simple things and not worry about perfection.

Anyway, I'm going to post my drawings in here so you can get an example of beginner studies that one would expect from an elementary drawing class. There will be line gestures, shade and light studies, contour, etc. These are the kinds of basic studies that any beginner should start out with. Sure they can be really boring, but when you learn to draw you have to draw stuff you don't always enjoy.

These are all in conté or charcoal on 18 x 24 rough newsprint.

Here above we have some quick gestures of a tricycle and some still life. The one on the bottom right was some kind of attempt at mass gesture. These were all done very quickly. The goal when doing a gesture is not to be perfectly accurate. You just want to get the general outline and form of the object.

In the middle picture at the top is a simple line drawing, and at the bottom you can see that we started to practice elipses, which can be more difficult than you would think to get right.

Above are still lives where we used scribble gesture, and simple line. I think we had about 10 minutes to do each of these. When you do a gesture, try to get everything you see on to the page as quickly as possible, don't worry about fine details. As a beginner, you may have some trouble getting everything centered on the page. You will get better with practice.

End of Year Sketch Dump

Here are more pieces of random sketches done on class paper!

More stuff...

I finally have a scanner again! (years later, lol!) Scanners sure have come way down in price since I last had one. Most of these sketches were made on recycled paper from my college classes.

Macaroni Backgrounds

Lately I've been into repeatable designs and patterns that would be useable for backgrounds or for cloth. These are a few backgrounds for a project that I've been working on that has to do with macaroni and cheese.

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Portraits in the dark

I drew these at the beginning of October. How time flies! They are portraits of speakers at a conference. I drew each one in +-15 minutes and in very dim light, so I couldn't really see what I was doing, so some of them look better than others. Overall it was a good exercise.

School Doodles

I was throwing away some old school papers and didn't get very far before I realized some of them had some doodles on them. And then a few other sketches I did while I was at work on scrap papers.

little bitty pretty one

The past few weeks have been really difficult. If there's anything I'm learning from it, it's when to say no and know your limits. Sometimes you just can't do everything on your own, so don't kill yourself trying. I have a feeling that things will probably get worse before they get better. But after that, there is only one direction to go and that is up.

Anyway, there is a sketchbook that has been circulating around the store where I work with each employee adding decorating a page or two with their own artwork. The book is huge, probably about 4 inches thick. Much of what others have done in it is super nice, so when it was my turn to take it home, I knew I had to create something extra special. At first I drew, inked and colored a picture but then I decided it looked really bad and I didn't want that representing me as an artist. So I took out the page and inserted my own with a new sketch I did in a couple of hours. But it turned out great and it was five times better than what I had done before.