Heya,

Here's long pose drawing that I did at a workshop that Sadie Jernigan Valeri hosted. This is a very long pose (12 hours, a couple of sessions, 6 hours a piece with the actual model drawing time being about 7 hours total). It is so nice to be able to take your time and really pay attention to proportions and all (well at least a lot more than usual) spatial relationships in a very long pose. The luxury of keeping the drawing very primitive for a long period of time before diving into sculpting the figure on paper is a calming experience. Don't get me wrong....that feeling of losing control and having the drawing going into a bad direction still comes around to give you a cold sweat and bring bile to the top of your throat, but to have the time to blow away any part of the drawing at any time and know that you have time to correct it is nice. Most of us in the workshop had little more than a basic lay-in after the first session....and that was such a good thing.

Having said that, I initially looked at the drawing and I thought probably the same thing that a lot of you out there are probably thinking.....at least those of you that do some of this figure drawing stuff, which is, "It's a nice drawing that looks like it was done in a couple of hours....maybe less" I was slightly disheartened:( (frowny face) This required further examination.....hmmm...... Ah Ha!!!!:) (a eureka smiley face) The big difference here, at least for me, is that from a proportion standpoint the drawing is pretty solid. If I were to look at other drawings of mine that are brought to a similar finish in areas, there are always parts of it that trail off into ambiguity and left unfinished. For example, I might exclude a back leg because it is not working with the rest of the drawing or is just so long or short that it can't be fixed in the remaining twenty minutes that I have and so I would do some cheap move like throwing it all in tone and suggesting its presence with a few lines and then accenting the areas of the drawing that I thought that I got right to draw the eye of the viewer away from the malfunction. I definitely would not have anything that would be construed as solidly constructed pair of hands or feet, they would be replaced by a graphical shorthand that I find myself always throwing down to suggest their gesture. I may not even attempt a face/head.

I really love the fact that Sadie offered this long pose workshop, and wish that there were more in this area to go to. (Thanks Sadie!!) If you haven't tried a super long pose, I highly recommend it. I found it really fun and rewarding in a different way than a typical figure drawing session where the longest pose is a 20 minute drawing. I love 'em both.

Later,
Chris

P.S. Manny Pacquiao is the coolest dude on earth.

Jed on the cover of "Gallant"

Heya,

Painted up another sketch of Jed from my sketch book (blue sketch is also posted). As I was painting him up, for some reason I felt like a pipe in his hand was appropriate for him in this picture. After the pipe was added, I took a good look at him and realized that he looked a bit like a middle aged douche bag that would look to various "men's" magazines for his life's important guide posts. This might have something to do with my own neurosis, you see...I just had a birthday on the 13th of March and with every birthday lately comes an overwelming feeling of being quite pathetic, unaccomplished, and spiritually bankrupt. Typical insecurities of an aging male they tell me, but the facts are undeniable.....I am middle aged and at times a douche bag, however I am happy to say that I don't have a subscription to Playboy, GQ, or (God forbid) Maxim:) So back to Jed. I put him on this magazine cover ( I ripped the main headline off of an actual Esquire magazine that had Johnny Depp on the cover). I like the image, but here's the problem....Jed would never knowingly pose for the cover of a magazine like this. He's just not that kind of guy.... so I imagine that Jed was duped into thinking that he was posing for the cover of "High Times" (a magazine to which I am also not subscribed to) and the disappoinment that he had when he found out that he was actually on the cover of "Gallant" was equal to the disappointment that he had when he found out that rather than smoking what he affectionately refers to as "the sticky-icky" from the pipe that the photographer handed him, he was just smoking a trendy blend of the latest, high quality, imported, turkish and morrocan tobaccos whose taste had subtle hints of citrus and oak.....bummer.

Later,
Chris

a few expressions and a quote

Hi,

So work is kinda busy as of late....but I found some time today to compile these expressions that I had worked on for my head sculpture. All of these high poly sculpting packages continue to amaze me. I am still wrestling with the ZBrush interface a bit...but I think the fun part outweighs the technical interface gymnastics you have to perform when you hunker down to a ZBrush sculpting session....a little.

So my favorite figure drawing teacher had a favorite quote that he would often recite to his different classes. Because I had the fortune of taking an uncountable number of this teacher's classes, I had seen him refer to this quote many times. I have a theory that you won't hear something until you are "ready" to hear it. It was on a hot July day in a stuffy figure drawing room in the valley down in Los Angeles. We had just finished our morning session of drawing and I was ready for our lunch. Our teacher whipped out this familiar old paper back book and I knew he was going to break out the old "my favorite artist quote" chestnut again. So I ignored my grumbling stomach and listened. Going almost unnoticed, I could hear a lump in his throat as he read it slowly trying to communicate the gravity that this philosophy had for him and that he really wished that some of us could take away the spirit of the words with us throughout our careers as artists. I really did "hear" what he he wanted us to hear that day. The quote went like this:

From the age of six I had a penchant for copying the form of things, and from about fifty, my pictures were frequently published; but until the age of seventy, nothing that I drew was worthy of notice. At seventy-three years, I was somewhat able to fathom the growth of plants and trees, and the structure of birds, animals, insects, and fish. Thus when I reach eighty years, I hope to have made increasing progress, and at ninety to see further into the underlying principles of things, so that at one hundred years I wil have achieved a divine state in my art, and at one hundred and ten, every dot and every stroke will be as though alive. Those of you who live long enough, bear witness that these words of mine prove not false.

My teacher's name is Glenn Vilppu and the artist that he quoted was Hokusai.

Thanks Glenn!!!!!!!

later,
Chris

Feelin the Cintiq LUV:)

So here's a sculpt that I did of a head in ZBrush. I did it from some reference that I found on this website called 3d.sk. 3d.sk a photographic reference site that is hosted a guy in Slovakia. I seem to remember that I wasn't too happy with the way that the site was organized or the way that the subscription costs were structured so I cancelled after downloading some images. I've seen this particular gentleman digitally sculpted before by others online using the same reference photos, but I just wanted a nice head with lots of character to do a study of and try some techniques that I've been reading about....and he has such a sculptable face.....lots of wrinkles and whatnot to play around with. It was fun.

Later,
Chris

Bedhead Jed

First post!!!! Woohooo!!!!

Hellooooo......(echo...echo...echo) I'm sure this shout-out will only be heard by me, until I get the guts to tell other people that I actually have a blog. It's a lonely and dark place in here right now. Let's hang a picture on the wall and see if it brightens things up a bit.

I have been inspired by a site called "Creaturebox" This little corner of the world wide web is the creation of Greg Baldwin and Dave Guertin. These two guys are just great. I think they work for Insomniac Games as character and creature designers. Here's a link to their site: http://creaturebox.com/ Their designs are imaginative, well executed, and best of all...they're fun to look at! So with that being said...I shamelessly tried to "bite their style" and painted up an old drawing I had of a character design that I've had laying around for a while. I wouldn't even call it an imitation of what they do, because I really can't come close to their line quality, design sense, or painting skills. Let's just say that I ripped off as much as I possibly could.

So here's Bedhead Jed. What can I say about old Jed? Jed likes to sleep, he is kind of a slacker, his personal hygiene habits have much to be desired, and he thinks that the snack food "Bugles" is mana straight from heaven. Although he tends be flakier than a popular brand of breakfast cereal, he is pretty easy to hang out with and would give you the wrinkled shirt off his own back . I like Jed...he's my people.

-Chris