Monday, December 7, 2009

Model Behavior

"Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed." - William Blake

In the meantime, the Beginning Drawing class is, eh, drawing to a close for the semester. Here's a couple quick demos; the first a one-minute gesture, and the second is a ten-minute sketch from the model.

Posted here are snapshots of both original sketches; used up some white matte board left laying around the department studio - makes for good, sturdy material and recycles what otherwise would be wasted after cutting out 90% for a matte. I actually like the original drawing almost just as much as the "finished" image: the organic spontaneity of the underlying graphite is preserved. After taking a digital picture, it's then adjusted for brightness & contrast in Photoshop, then exported to FreeHand after being converted into a vectored image. Then follows a couple hours tweaking or deleting individual points and slight modifications including compositional arrangement. The end result is a very expressive line, much livelier than the crude Sharpie. Not that I don't appreciate crudity.




Besides printing out a few PDFs to get the models a copy (they rarely get to score any art from these sessions, and don't get paid anywhere near as much as this job actually is worth), I now have some images that'll get tossed on the compost heap in the mental studio awaiting further inspiration or funding (there is a distinct causal relationship). The one is a fairly decent portrait of the anonymous model, but the several gestures are abstracted enough that strictly from a design standpoint they are pegged for rebirth in as woodcuts and/or embroidery - two back-burner projects I swear I'm gonna get around to this winter. Right...
Soon as I'm done with this next batch of funnies...




"If you see somebody running down the street naked every single day, you stop looking up." - Stevie Nicks

2 comments:

  1. Hey Jamie... not exactly a comment on your excellent postings, but a link to a DNM story you might find interesting if you haven't found it already... Remember in Cartooning class, the discussion about Mohammed & the turban?

    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TERROR_PROBE_SUSPECT?SITE=AKFAI&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

    Hoping the holidays go well for you =D

    Btw - pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease tell me they're doing the cartooning class again this year with you?!?! It made my entire summer to attend that class...

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  2. Hi, Jamie--

    This post reminds me that we need art for Ice Box again this year. We're opening submissions from now till Feb 15, 2010.

    Also--how long did the model in the first sketch have to hold her pose? It looks uncomfortable--but makes a dynamic image!

    --Cindy

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