charcoal
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Drama Lama Drawings
These two gesture drawings took about 5 minutes each. I used soft charcoal on newsprint paper. I like the overall capture of the poses. There’s clearly some drama between these two, but we’ll never know for sure. It amuses me to come up with random stories for these figures, even though it’s the same model
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Trio in Time Drawing
Sometimes, it’s just one of those days when drawing simply isn’t flowing and even coffee doesn’t help. That’s what happened in this trio in time drawing. I like the composition of the figures, but their roughness is a little underwhelming. Each one took only five minutes, but I feel like I could have done more.
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Short Pose Drawing
Short pose drawing is great for capturing the living essence of the figure. It’s the dynamic gesture that makes charcoal come to life. This particular gesture is more complete, and it took me 7 minutes to draw. I didn’t have the time to re-define lights and darks, but I got proportion and pose pretty well.
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Two-Minute Gesture Drawings
Here’s another set of two-minute gesture drawings. I drew these very loosely, but I like how lively they look. This is the case when accuracy is overrated, and these wiggly lines translate into movement and emotion. It took just a few minutes with a charcoal stick, but eventually will transform into a finished drawing. By
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Moss Toned Self-Portrait
Here’s another self-portrait drawing. I actually don’t quite remember drawing it, but I remember being very annoyed by green paper. It seems like it’s fine, but somehow drawings of people on this color look weird. I changed the photo settings to black and white, and I think it looks way better. Recently, I tried using
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Dynamic Gesture Poses
Here are two five-minute poses from life drawing sessions at TSOFA. I actually like both of these drawing. They’re simply dynamic gesture poses that capture the movement and intent. There’s emotion and anticipation despite some anatomical inaccuracies. This is proof that a pose doesn’t need to be long to capture it well. Often enough, basic
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Crosswalk Figures
These two look like crosswalk figures. Their path has intersected once, and then they’ll never see each other again. That is life! Anyway, each of these figures took 10 minutes. I used willow charcoal on newsprint. I feel like I should have paid more attention to the light in these, because the values are all
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Statue or Woman Drawing
At life drawing sessions, we get different models and some tend to keep their arms close to the body. This is a classical contrapposto pose, but I’m not quite happy about the arm. I prefer when the arms are away from the body for short poses, because they tend to hide important points on the
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Eastern Merchant Portrait
Every now and then, I attend portrait drawing sessions. Occasionally, models there wear costumes and create mysterious and interesting characters. This person had eastern motifs with flowy fabrics and sparkles throughout the costume, and for some reason I channeled this eastern merchant portrait. This portrait is tiny, 6 by 9 inches. I actually had a
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Figure Drawing Side and Back View
Here is figure drawing of side and back view poses. These are quick gestures, the one on the left took 10 minutes, and the other one — 7. My goal was to capture the dynamic feel of the poses, and I think I did that well. If you look closely, you will notice that 7-miute
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Quick Figure Sketches
This set is two quick figure sketches. I actually marked the time for each figure. The first one is 5 minutes, the second one is 2. I like how the 5-minute figure developed, but the 2-minute of has interesting quality to it. As if I captured the most important parts, the rest can be filled
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Figure Sitting on Column
In this gesture drawing, a figure is sitting on a column. That column was actually a regular barstool, but I improvised. That’s probably why it looks so wonky. I usually work on those elements last, and there probably wasn’t enough time to finish it properly. However, I like it as a gesture. This drawing probably