NYC's Subway Sketch Group - (feb. 2006 Subway update)

[AmishCommy]

Inspired by Digi, goldenavatar and myself are starting our own subway sketch group in NYC. As a precursor to the main event (which should be happening the weekend of March 26-27th) I scanned in some pages of my sketchbook that i take with me for those long rides on the subway. Enjoy.






this one was done at JFK airport

JFK as well









more to come

[cotron]

love em, man. great vitality to em. you took classes w/ george pratt, right? I had the fortune of having him for a few semesters here, totally changed the way I drew.

a crit, or suggestion I guess, for your sketches- try incorporating the environment of the subjects, I think the feeling of the subway would come across really well this way. just a suggestion, though. hope to see some more!

[AmishCommy]

Ya dude, i hate backgrounds. My major weakness. I dont really get to the backgrounds cause I usualy don't have a lot of time to get to them. Becasue i use a brush pen and the subways are so damn shaky a lot of time is wasted trying to control the line. I had an awesome caligraphy pen do this kind of stuff but dumbass me broke it.

This recent bunch has a hint of background in them.

This left page: just a little screwing around warmup after taking a look at wes9000's thread.


The right page: I was waiting for my sister outside her work.


real quick ones done at the laundromat.

[AmishCommy]

pushing myself to do some backgrounds:



Had a little time to kill in front of the Grace Building at Bryant Park. this is the end result.

[Eew]

omg those a good , those sketches are FULL of life ! keep em coming

[nicolas]

these are great ammish!! I really enjoyed these, great fluidity and lineweight.., amazing how well youve captured the faces with just enough lines....and knew where to stop drawing....keep em coming, please!!

[goldenavatar]

Here's to hoping the sketchbook group lasts and endures.

[AmishCommy]

Eew, nicolas - thanks for the kind words guys. here's a secret to how i know when to stop: when the person moves or the train comes to my stop is when i stop. hehe.

Golden - Sunday, 27 1:30 pm - IT's ON!!!

Here are some older ones:







this one was done in Boston around New Years












These last 2 i did last night. I forgot my sketchbook at home, foolish me.

[AmishCommy]

Well we said we'd do it and we did. Turn out was low. Myself, GoldenAvatar, and Winjer with a friend. We ended up taking the R into Brooklyn and back. Let's hope more people will show up next week.

I lost track of time and where i was and got a ton of sketches done.

These first two was Waiting around outside Starbucks, drawing the Falun Gong demonstrators:





The rest were done on the R train:





























had to go to pencil because the train is to damn shaky for a brush pen. This was actualy a HB Graphite Stick.

[MisterJC]

your stuff looks good, alot of character.

for some of em, are you doing blind contour drawings?

[winjer]

I did more but im only posting these to make myself look good.

[winjer]

oh shit am i not supposed to post my stuff in here? I thought this was just the general thread for our group. Ill take it out if you say.

[goldenavatar]

Not known for my being particularly fast, here's what I did last in my sketchbook at the meet. Sadly, I couldn't goto the drawing class at BCC because of the weather. Sorry, but these are links to my DA gallery.
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/16788013/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/16787953/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/16787903/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/16787864/
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/16787793/

[AmishCommy]

naw dude, its cool, I'll edit it to be NYC subway sketch group. Post away.
By the way, i'm loving your sketches more and more everytime i look at them, W.

G. Post yours when you get a chanse.

MisterJC - thanks dude. its more like a legaly blind contour. I look more than if i were to do a blind contour and concentrate less. the way i draw from life, especialy in situations where the figure does not stay still, is try to get as much information down as poscible. lifting your pencil from the paper just seems like a waste of time. The whole reasoning behind blind contour drawing is to train your hand to follow your eye. I've been doing this for some time now so it may seem like the hand/eye thing is starting to work out for me. I still have a ways to go.





I totally didn't realize that Sunday was Easter. I guess that's why there was such a low turn out.

[flaptraps]

great inks guys! inspiring

[dadamafia]

nice sketches yall. too bad im not in ny, all we have here in miami is our crappy metrorail and i cant find a single friend whod wanna go ride round on that all day.

[King Odessa]

these are some really fine brush work.Speed seems to be a strentgh for you. Thanks for sharing these. Also could recomend a good brush pen or a specific brand that works best?

[AmishCommy]

well, probably becasue of Daylight Savings Time and lack of promotion by us (and lazziness) no one showed up this weekend. I was sitting around in Subway waiting until 3:00pm waiting for anyone who wasnt informed of Daylight Savings.

Instead of looking at is as i was waiting for people (which i absolutely despise) i looked at this as a forced detachment from the comPOOter. I was able to get a bunch of concept work done for a side project I'm working on.

I did, however, sketched a few people at starbucks. here is the end result:












Today (04.06) was such a beutiful day so i decided to spend some time in the park and once again away from the ComPOOter. Once again I worked on the concepts for my personal project. trying to visualize thescript and begin to layout shots for the storyboards for it. But much like in the Sunday fashion i ended the session with some observational drawings. These were done with a Sumi brush and Walnut ink:








for 04.10.05 I've already gotten an RSVP and Golden promissed to show up this time as well. So everyone else come out too. Location is still the same, Starbucks on 34thSt. at 1 Penn Plaza.

[AmishCommy]

flaptraps - thanks for the compilents

dadamafia - ya dude that monorail does seem kinda useless since everyone and their grandma owns a car. Sorry to dis your town but i never liked Miami. I used to go down evey now and then whe i lived in Boca and i always managed to get lost there.

King Odessa - I use a Kaimei brush pen i got at the Pearl in NYC. It's a little pricy ($50) and the rifil cartiges are $1 each. I go through a cartrige a week when i'm all out drawing, otherwise it lasts. I like it casue its small, light, and very portable.

Before I found this pen I used a black refilable one ($15) whose name i can't read becasue its in japaneese. (Got it in LA at a Japanese book store - i saw David Mack using one at ComicCon 2004 and i had to have one too) Winjer uses the same one so he may be able to tell you the brand. Otherwise you have to wait til i get my ass in gear and photograph the pens i use.

I also have a "Nori" brush from Cheap Joe's (online art store). That was my first one. It's cheep ($7-8 ), bulky, and gets kind of messy when refilling the ink. It takes regular inks that you can buy at any store.

about speed, I never really like spending a lot of time on things. if I spend a long time on something it looses its energy and i end up messing it up in some way. Speed is also good to have in the professional world. (funny side note: I went to the Society of Illustrators Jazz Life Drawing session this past tuesday - which was totally awesome and everyone in NYC should go - and i ended up sucking trying to draw the models for majority of the session. But in-between poses I made a few quickies of other atendies and those turned out great and in less time.)

[digi]

Hey that's awesome guys! What a great idea! hehehe...

[goldenavatar]

Hey that's awesome guys! What a great idea! hehehe...

Twernt nuthin'!

By the way, I posted up on just about any art forum you can think of about the next rest of the dates in April for the sketchbook group. Hopefully we'll get more attendees as time progresses and more folks slowly, but surely(?) show up.

[AmishCommy]

Golden - the posts are helping, now all you gotta do is show up, hehe.

Digi - come back and check in on your bastard children.



Here's a new batch.

Winjer showed up, and a newcomer, Jin. We took the E downtown, but there was no one on the train. so we ended up going to the park. Initialy tried to go to the Zoo but seing as how we're all broke we went to a grassy area and sketched until 6:30. I sucked most of the day. Didnt start getting good until the very end.

E train:


















Park:



























This one's my favorite of the whole batch:

[hito]

Great. Love looking at these. Breaking out the watercolors on the latest batch I see?

I should be able to make it to one soon.

[winjer]

I should post my stuff but meh whatever. Im surprised this has made it to week 3. Ill be there for week 4 too

[goldenavatar]

Anything happen this week?

[AmishCommy]

Golden - I showed up and waited for you until 2. Jin, from last week, showed up and we ended up going to the park again. Once again I sucked, and we did end up staying til 6:30 like last time. I wasn't gonna show cause i was sick all week and on a stupid sleep schedule, but i forced myself, and other than a severe lack of sleep and a stuffed nose, i had a good time.

Waited for you too, Winjer.

Next week i'll be showing up too, but i'll only be able to stick around for 2 or 3 hours. Rocking my Jewishocity and throwing a Passover Dinner for my family and Jewish friends.

Hito - the last few weeks were great because we were able to chill in the park until dusk. Its best for you to come out on one of the nice days so we can justify your trip up from Philly and stick around for a while. So next weekend may not be the best to come up but the ones afterwards should be.


I'll post my crappy struggles once i get a chanse to scan them.

[nevets]

do you sketch witha sharpie? I could never do that. i'd ebd up with nothing but chicken scratchs

[AmishCommy]

do you sketch witha sharpie?

Nope, its a brush pen. I'll post a picture of it with an update from the last two sessions tomorrow. Been slacking on scanning them in.

I could never do that. i'd ebd up with nothing but chicken scratchs

That's how we all start out. My most recent batch is a lot of chicken stcatches. I had this one class with George Pratt where he made us do 2 hours of 5 second poses from a model. 5 seconds!!! There's no time to get anything done. but by the end of the 2 hours my chicken scratches started to look like something. I filled up the whole pad of 18x24" newsprint and this is the best sketch i got out of the whole batch:



This was in 2001. You do enough of these and you'll start seing results.

[Arctis]

I really enjoy a lot your sketches made with a thin pencil : that's the way I used to draw, and now I want to retry this way.
Very good feeling, man.

[AmishCommy]

Arctis - I don't use a thin pencil, its either a Staedtler MARS780 (you know the clicky type with the thick led) or a graphite stick. The only time i use thin Clicky pencils is when i'm sketching thumbnails.


Here are the sketches from 2 sundays ago. I'll scan last Sunday's later tonight or tomorrow.

Subway (E train):




Park (Just outside the Zoo where the portrait artists are):