Major Project: Sketching Away...(beating the shark into submission)

UPDATE: Right...so after this first week, I've realized that I've bitten off way more than I can chew.

Instead of working on the features of the head and the entire figure, I'm going to stick to just the head.

My start has been very rusty, but that's exactly what I expected. I began working from Drawing: A Search For Form by Joseph Mugnaini and Janice Lovoos (pages 30, 34, and 61 scanned below). I drew a lot of cylinders and copied some of the illustrations. It was a painful process of getting the muscle memory of drawing back. I had to re-teach myself what it feels like to see when I'm drawing. I'm happy to be nurturing that feeling again--it's a feeling a aliveness and urgency. It's a space without doubt.









My sketches:

I write notes to myself too. "True drawing is an athletic feat." Giving myself a pep talk. Writing and drawing is a form of thinking, processing ideas.

After working from the book for awhile, I was frustrated. I knew that I had to start drawing from life. I knew it would be painful, having been away for so long. But I did it anyways. I drew my bedpost and a dumbbell. Looking at it now, it isn't as bad as I thought at the time. But I still am getting too focused on the details of the things I was drawing. I wasn't simplifying the forms into their basic structural elements like the book was teaching. 

Simplicity is hard. 

I went back to the book and did some more 

I drew an empty jam jar. 

I tried to break this little Pegasus toy down to its structural basics. Still too much detail, not enough focus on structure. But old habits die hard. Every drawing is teaching me what I could be doing differently. 

A stegosaurus toy

A couple days later, I selected another book to work from: The Artist's Complete Guide to Facial Expression by Gary Faigin. This book has a detailed analysis of the facial features. I started with the nose, because it's the most static feature (unlike the eyes and lips, which can change a lot). I copied some of the illustrations and tried to make my own simplified model that I could "rotate" on the page. When I started doing nose sketches, I thought to myself: "Holy crap...I could spend five weeks just understanding the nose!!" That's the moment I decided that I needed to simplify my project goals a bit. 

From the book:

And my sketches: 

I'm going to continue working on the facial features individually and watch a few videos on the structure of the entire head. By the end of my project, my goal will be to have structural studies of the head from a front view, profile, and three-quarter angle. 

If nothing else, this week's drawing sessions have gotten me out of the rut and back on the road again. It'll take some time before I work myself up, and that's okay. I'm excited to draw again, and that's what's important.