Tracing Leo

Tracing Leo, a photo by Steph Toth Kates on Flickr.

Nice and simple drawing lab this week - I traced this picture. I make an effort to follow the instructions - so despite my deeply held hatred of mechanical pencils - I went ahead and hunted one down and used it - who knows - maybe I would discover that they were more wonderful than I remembered. But no - I still hate them. A lot. I suppose that's valuable to know as well :) I also got some more faces done - I'm up to 25 now. I painted one of my state representatives (referencing from her reelection campaign postcard) with Toby's Crayola washable watercolors. Luckily I took a photo right away - because the next morning I found that the cats had knocked a glass of water on her and she'd washed away completely. Kinda crazy.  It was a wonky painting anyway - her right eye was floating away weirdly.  That's what I get for diving in without doing a pencil sketch to start :)

100 Faces

100 Faces, a photo by Steph Toth Kates on Flickr.

Next up in the book is the drawing from a live nekkid model - which, while I've done a lot in the past, I'm still happy to do again - but what I really want to do is go do Dr. Sketchy - and the Kansas City Dr. Sketchy takes a break in the summer because their space is unairconditioned. So I'm just going to put those 2 weeks on hold for now and come back to them in a few months when Dr. Sketchy starts up again. Cuz, yunno - why pay lots of money for a live drawing class when you could pay a tiny bit of money and see burlesque! So this week I began my 100 faces. I think I only got about 15 done - but she says you can take a few months to get through it :) I find that I'm almost always disappointed when I'm just drawing out of my head, but I can be pretty happy if I'm looking at a photo or a real person for inspiration. We have a huge photo book, darn, I've forgotten the artists name, but it's full of faces - so I've been opening to a random page and drawing whatever I find. That's been fun. Now I need to get more into the mixed media business and get away from just whatever pen I have lying around :) I've been really wanting to play with watercolor lately. so that will probably be the next set. click the photo to see more faces on flickr.

Ink Dropper Drawings

Ink Dropper Drawings, a photo by Steph Toth Kates on Flickr.

The night I made these I really didn't like them, but by the next morning I'd begun to warm up to them. At first the toilet paper blobbing seemed to be just messing up an already mucky process - but now I enjoy the texture. It almost looks pixilated where the ink picked up the texture from the toilet paper. These are the six that I have deemed successes. Click the photo to see the ones I was less happy with and how I altered them. (btw - this is taken from a photo of Gary Oldman from an old ad for Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy :)

Four Eyes

IMG_8711, a photo by Steph Toth Kates on Flickr.

I've been avoiding this drawing lab for a long time. I felt like I'd payed my "copying photos out of magazines" dues in middle school and this eye in particular bothered me. I hated the way the lighting made the pupil look square. Finally, inspired by this guy, I decided to dedicate no more than 45 minute of my life to it and get it done (after all, if he can do all that in 30 minutes, I can draw a silly eyeball in 10) So I drew my basic eye outlines in 5 minutes, put on some peppy music set a timer for 10 minutes each and cranked these guys out fast. I'm glad to have them done and I'm pretty happy with them too. I did end up giving the colored pencil one an extra few minutes. All that color blending takes longer than I thought. The other two eyes are here.