d r a g o n b o n e s    

I’ve done another set of 3 minute portraits. To see who these three are based on, click here for for the reference images.

While we’re on the topic of quick portraits, I have a new project in mind. These 3 minute portraits are great for scratching my ‘don’t want to focus for too long on one thing’ mindset, but not so great for catching true likenesses. With that in mind, I’m thinking that 5 minutes should do the trick. Today it occurred to me that a large collection of such portraits would make for an interesting gallery showing. Perhaps interesting enough to warrant my first public show.

How many would I need to create to warrant a show? Well, I got to thinking that 1 work week’s worth should do the trick.

40 hours / 5 minutes per portraits =480 portraits.

Yeah – that’s a lot of portraits, but you don’t get better without practice so I guess it’s time to practice. A lot.

I’ll post more about that soon.

A bunch of very quick sketches of random faces/characters that I did just to get warmed up recently. Done entirely digitally, and spent only a couple minutes on each face. I just wanted to get a feel for each of the characters/creatures and then move on to the next. Also played with lighting in a couple of the characters.

I’ll be at Dr. Sketchy’s this Saturday for the ‘Tribute to Mad Men’. Let’s see: Dames, Drawing, and Drinking. Ummm… yes please. Anyone else coming out?

Check out more details on the Branch Blog.

Open Figure Drawing Studio – Wilmington DE

I have to say that I am beyond thrilled to report that the Delaware Art Museum is having Open Figure Drawing Studio time every 1st and 3rd Monday evenings of each month. Find more information on their website (scroll down – it’s under the ‘drawing and painting’ subsection.

I’ve only been to two sessions, but I’m really looking forward to number 3, and I feel like I can see a marked improvement just since the first session. It’s long past time I got back to the basics. I have a feeling this will greatly improve my work overall.

If you’re in the area, and like to draw figurative work, I can’t recommend this highly enough.

Aviary

So the combination of images above (sorry about the crappy camera phone ‘scans’) was assembled in Aviary in my Chrome browser session. I’m always interested in checking out new technologies – especially when it comes to digital art, and that’s what Aviary provides: free, comprehensive creative tools – all right in your browser. There’s an app for it in the Chrome App Store, and  I have to say that it works pretty well. There’s some bugs to be worked out, and this is clearly a ‘young’ product, but the potential of this thing is amazing.

I use Google Docs pretty much exclusively for my personal document editing, and the idea that there will soon be a creative suite to match it is just awesome! You can bet I’ll be watching this one closely.

And here is the very last of the sketches from my 2010 Moleskine sketchbook.