Head Space
‘Doing Art’ is a practice. And an area I need work at. I often find myself beginning a practice and then somewhere along the way I find myself trying to turn it into a masterpiece, sometimes wishing I’d used better paper or the opposite, wishing I’d just kept it short and sweet. Alas, I am a sucker for detail and can get sucked in by the allure of another dark crevice, a shadow perfectly placed or a hint of red just there in the corner.
Today, I pulled a blank journal from the shelf and labeled it ‘Intuitive Journaling’, for jotting in a morning (or anytime) quick study. Wanting to really improve HOW I see the shapes in a head, I went with some quick timed head studies. (If you Google ‘timed figure drawing’ it will pull up a couple of websites that have different options for randomized peoples heads or bodies to pop up and do a ‘you choose your time’ quick study.)
So, these began as 5-minute studies but I did pause the timer and gave each one about 15 minutes. The top left was truly 5 minutes before the image disappeared and I had to invent the rest of her face details. The other three were from a website that allowed me to pause and still have the image on the screen as long as I liked. I think I will go with the longest timer of 10 minutes in the future as 5 is a good challenge but doesn’t quite allow me to get into the juicy parts of rendering.
The subtle mid-tones don’t come across well in this image but you can get the feel of it. The focus for me this session was in transitioning from head to neck in a way that feels natural. The girl in the bottom left was really tough for me and I still don’t care for her neck area. But that’s why I practice right? The other area I focused on was proportion. Really looking at where the facial features sit in relationship to one another and capturing the correctness on my paper. I did capture a likeness of the two women on the right and I figured two out of four was a pretty good result. I will continue to play in this way and I will probably move into doing some that are super loose and not needing anything more than capturing the ‘essence’ of the person.
