Some of my readers may have noticed my pin-drop silence on the blog throughout the length of my challenge. This was partly due to me re-prioritizing once I decided I was in fact going to test and compete at a karate tournament in Japan this summer. I definitely will own up to getting distracted by this and other activities and part-time jobs. What became a staple to my art practice during this time is drawing. I’m not entirely finished with the paintings I’ve begun, so I’ve decided to share my drawings instead.
I’ll begin with the most current drawings, and work my way backward chronologically. Most recently, I finished two drawings that are in various stages as paintings in order to get a sense of the material in monochrome before jumping in with color. Many traditional realist artists start with a monochrome or sepia under-painting, but I’ve never incorporated this stage. The drawings were a welcome practice in value, in addition to a nice departure from painting and the smell of spirits and whatever else makes it so stinky!
An upcoming Artist as Muse painting:
I drew a few studies from a book of Polish artists of the Holocaust. Their faces captured me as much as did wanting to learn from the artists’ styles. Here are three of those studies:
After a self-portrait by Marian Ruzamski:
After David Friedman’s portrait of Jerzego Stanislawa Severy, 1946:
After Vladmir Zlamall’s portrait of Eugeiusza-Prusinowskiego:
I focused for a time on value-less structure drawings, at the suggestion of an artist friend. This was to train my eye to see plain-changes and start measuring distance and proportion. The results varied proportional to my effort! Here is a selection of them and along with one with shading on the lower right:
Here are a few of my first sketches from this art challenge, experimenting in style while drawing objects around the studio:
Stay tuned: Coming up- updates on the paintings, as I complete them.