Life Drawings of the Undead

[Black Spot]

An interesting and progressive sketchbook. Thanks for sharing.

[tmbritton]

Black Spot: Thanks for stopping by. I'm glad you find it interesting. I thought I was boring people with the volumes of life drawings.

Speaking of volumes of life drawings, here's a few from tonight.







That's all that I have in me today. It's not even midnight and I'm already sleepy. Early night.

[tmbritton]

Monday Night Life Drawing.

[tmbritton]

Here's a digital landscape. Photo referenced. Painter and Photoshop.

[tmbritton]

Painter and Photoshop. It might be time to do some actual art instead of just studies.

[KidApe]

Hey man, these last two artworks had me thinking that you completed them from start to finish traditionally! Great look, keep it up.

[tmbritton]

Kidape: Adding in a texture photo overlay breaks up the digital appearance. Maybe, I don't know, it might reinforce the digital appearance by being an obvious overlay. Thanks for the compliment

Here's a couple I did tonight. They're both photo referenced. The first is Gloria Swanson and the second is a photo that's been on my computer so long I forget where it comes from. Beautiful photo though. I didn't do it justice.

The first was supposed to just be a quick study. Ended up taking forever because I couldn't get it to look right. On the second one I covered up any parts that didn't get much work with brushstrokes.

[The Ham]

you can see the infulence of Sargent in your work! personal favorite of mine!
i love the jester piece and the portrait based on one of Sargent's really nice colour you used.
your figures as developing nicely! keep that upf for sure form your first post to your last your understanding of the figure has blatently developed. your scenery work is really nice! keep up your style has a great traditional paintrly style not too many people has that these days

[tmbritton]

The Ham: Thanks for stopping by. I definitely take it as a compliment that you can see a Sargent influence in my stuff. He's one of my favorites. His paintings just look correct, like that's how a painting should be done.

Here's a bunch of stuff. Went to two life drawing sessions today. My brain hurts a bit now.

[2buiart]

nice studies, gotta dig them life drawings. Your recent digital portrait are sweet, keep them coming

[tmbritton]

2buiart: Thanks for stopping by. Now that I'm addicted to wacom there's nothing I can do but keep the work coming.

Here's tonight's life drawing. I took pictures of some of the shorter ones, which I don't normally do. I guess I liked the energy in some of htem. The times range from 5 minutes to 30 minutes. Last night I think I started seeing rim lights for the first time. They seem to help define form quite a bit.

[ccsears]

i think there are some good things going on in your life drawings, but i've got two small suggestions--1) in some of the drawings, your shadows have gone really really dark almost to the point where it's hard to see the core of the shadow from the rest of the shadow shape. 2) more "calligraphy" in the lines of your core shadows--thicker, softer, thinner, lost edges, etc. it makes drawing more fun!

[Kim_bot]

Sweet, I saw your thumbnail pic for this thread, and I was like "whoa!" because I did the exact same Bouguereau study a while back. It's really interesting to see his process because all his finished things were really amazing and polished and it's rare to see something of his that's not "done."

So, let's see, you seem to be more of a "painter" than a "drawer"; by that I mean that you seem to focus more on value than on linework. Practice making your lines as confident as your shading, otherwise everything looks good.

[tmbritton]

ccsears: Yeah, I can see what you mean. I'm not varying the marks much. Maybe I should slow down and get the mark correct the first time instead of rushing through.

Kim_bot: Hey, yeah that Bougoureau paintings is beautiful. I like that it has a really polished face and the rest fades off. Yeah, maybe I need to put more time into the actual sketchbook. Kinda funny how now I look like more of a painter when I started drawing by copying Jim Lee comic books.

Here's tonight's digital practice, from photo reference.

[M0RS]

The brushwork in the digitals becoming a nice design element (earlier b/w one particularly).
The structure in your figures is also looking phenomenal.

See you sometime at the AVAA.

[Black Spot]

Life drawing is never boring to look at. Your digital nude is pretty good. On your last one - don't go too detailed until the rest of the picture has caught up.

[tmbritton]

MORS: Thanks for stopping by. Gotta admit that's fake brushwork. It's just crap layered on top that I'm trying to make look cool.

Black Spot. Thanks for stopping by again. I agree that life drawing is never boring to look at, or do. I think my favorite pieces of art may be Michelangelo figure studies.

So here's some more stuff. Nothing very finished here. Some more life drawing. Pretty lackluster. My general rule seems to be the more attractive the girls the worse the drawings.

Messed around with some watercolors for the first time since high school. For those of you who don't know, that means it's been quite a while. I like them much more than I used to.

[tmbritton]

Messing around with some new photoshop watercolor brushes and excessive texture overlays. This one was a lot of fun. Kinda threw representation out the window.



Detroit Represent

[tmbritton]

Here's a sketch from tonight. Drawn in Painter using the Acrylic captured bristle brush. First bristley brush in painter that worked for me. Then I took it into photoshop and destroyed it.

[Just_Nonplussed]

really like your latest life drawings and the chow (looks creepy but very solid).
it's great you have it twice a week. how long is it for? i have it once a week for three hours. and did i spot some life models that dressed up in outfits?

try to use less lines with 30sec pose maniacs gestures. try this - look/record, look/record, look/record. focus on essential lines, one at a time. then when you're fast enough, record facial details and musculature. though you might have already tried this, i only looked at page 1 and page 5 of your SB.

[Just_Nonplussed]

Here's some more scribbly bullshit from the last couple of days.

You know what I was thinking would be cool? If somebody had at some point written a book that broke down the human figure into simplified forms. Maybe a conceptual "mannequin" figure that could be drawn quickly in any pose. Maybe the figure could even be broken into geometric shapes. Like an egg shape for the head and ribcage. Maybe a cube for the pelvis and cylinders for the arms and legs. It would be nice if such a book were written by somebody who knew what he was talking about. Like an illustrator from the 1940s.

Does anybody know if such a thing exists? It could help my hapless floundering with a pencil quite a bit.

i've been working a lot on this lately. i've been concerned with it for nearly a year. i used to use loomis constructions and marvel comic constructions, but they weren't very effective for how i wanted to express, so i dumped their ideas and began on a long journey of 'self discovery' to create my own 'puppet' with my own 'rules'.

so with a little help from a book called 'force' by someone called 'michael d. mattesi' (ex-disney i think), and a lot of perseverence and thought on my part, i arrived at something like... 'drawing as language', language of movement. it's difficult to explain, but it's about your own journey.

i'm sure you can use how to draw manga or marvel or loomis, but your own artistic desires take over at some point.
in the end there is no 'magic' formula and if it was that easy then i guess there would be a lot more artists.

feel free to look at my thought processes on creation if it helps. however arrogant that might sound.

[tmbritton]

Just_Nonplussed: Thanks for stopping by. The life drawing is twice a week for three hours. In Austin you could actually find a life drawing session somewhere in town just about every day of the week. Every other Sunday they dress up in costumes.

That paragraph about scribbly bullhshit was actually a snarkey reply to an earlier reply that I didn't think was constructive and kind of a "Captain Obvious" remark.

Here's a digital from tonight. Playing with various brushes, seeing what I could do. Painter and Photoshop.

[tmbritton]

Hey all, here's a pile of life drawings from today.

[Henchman 21]

nice life studies! I dig the 20s-30s style girl the most.

[M0RS]

Nice work in that session today (the texture in the muscle shirt was a bitch, I was trying to suggest it but I think you nailed it), good to see you again, man.

[KidApe]

Hi Tom, it's been much to long since I've stopped by to see your progress, and I see that you've been updating quite a bit! These heavily textured paintings are really showing your style. Your life drawings are becoming stronger and more confident with each session. Keep it up man.

[tmbritton]

Henchman 21: Hey, thanks for stopping by.

M0RS: Good to see you at the drawing session again as well.

Kidape: Glad to see you on CA.org again. Thanks for the compliments.

Here's another dump of life drawings from tonight as well as a photo manipulation of one.

[tmbritton]

It's been a few days. Here's some watercolors from a life drawing session. It's fun to just watch them drip down the page. It's a brand new medium. I'm having fun with it.









Then here's a quick photoshop sketch that I took and layered one of the watercolors and some texture into it.

[KidApe]

yay, these are some progressive updates. I remember when you finished up the reclining model's portrait on Sunday, and as I saw it from a distance I could see the facial features through the drips. Good stuff. I think your latest artwork has an urban vibe to it because of the street wall textures which is awesome. Keep it up!

[tmbritton]

Kidape: Glad you like the textury stuff. It's a lot of fun to do.

So I did a lot of life drawing today. Since I was scanning that I also scanned some sketches. It turned into a lot of stuff. So here's a big pencil dump.