TBT - Toothbrush Perspective Drawing, 2004

After a two week hiatus from posting Throw Back Thursday art (sorry about that, life got a little crazy) I am back with another old drawing of mine that somehow has been lost over the years.

This drawing, like "A Hamburger's Perspective", was an experiment in perspective that I created as a short assignment in a foundation level art class in college. It was one of my first drawings I completed with the use of models. Models, whether people or objects, are used when trying to create references for a preconceived idea. In this way a model set up differs from a still life set up.

This particular drawing was inspired by some surrealistic work I was liking at the time, but instead of going the Salvador Dali route (think melting clocks) I wanted to lean more toward Rene Magritte's work. In many of his pieces, the overall feel is pretty comfortable–made up of familiar objects and elements–but then you realize that something is just not right, usually scale or defying a law of physics. ("Oh yeah, that apple is floating in front of that man's face.") This is what secures it in the realm of surrealism.

So I wanted to set a scene where most everything seemed normal, and then throw a proverbial wrench in as a surprise for the viewer. So I set up this scene of a bathroom, with normal bathroom stuff, only things aren't quite normal in this bathroom. The water is everywhere it shouldn't be and the toothbrush must have been borrowed from the giant at the other end of the beanstalk.

In order to get the appropriate perspective, the correct refraction of the toothbrush in the water, and the right shadow cast with a translucent toothbrush, I decided to create a set up from which I could take pictures to draw from. I could have guessed at these things, but this drawing would have been much more difficult. So I emptied one of my plastic "dresser" drawers, filled it with water, stuck a toothbrush and a little hand mirror down in it, added some paper behind it, and floated a little ceramic lid for the sink. It helped tremendously. I really think creating set ups like this are worth the effort.

That's the story behind this week's TBT.

 

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Aven - Pencil Drawing

Today is my sister-in-law Amy's birthday! Happy Birthday Amy! 

She recently mentioned on my Facebook page that she loves pencil drawings, which is good because graphite was my medium of choice when drawing a portrait sons Titus and Micah (see this week's TBT) back in 2009. Well, in 2012, they had a little girl, Aven, who is now no longer represented in the kids' portrait. I'm guessing you are seeing where I am going with this...

Adding all this info together, I decided to remedy the situation with a pencil drawing of Aven for Amy's birthday! I took some process photos as I worked, and thought I'd walk you through them.

First, here is the final piece:

Now for the process:

Both Amy and husband Dan have been taking some beautiful photographs with some vintage cameras they've picked up. I found one that Dan took of Aven that I thought was precious–I love the messiness of her hair.

So then I gridded the photo off, as I do with all portraits, and sketched it onto my bristol paper. (No photo for this step.)

After I finished the sketch, I took out my 9H pencil and went to work. For those of you who may be less familiar with the graphite scale, 9H is the lightest/hardest graphite lead I have. 

You know, it wouldn't hurt to just show you quickly. For those interested, this is the HB graphite scale.

As you can see, the leads range from hard to soft, and as you move toward softer leads, your ability to make darker lines increases. So for example, if you use a 10H pencil and try to get your darkest darks in a drawing, you will only frustrate yourself. Likewise if you are using a 10B pencil and trying to make soft, thin lines, you may shed a tear or two. Because the B range of pencils are softer, you are more likely to have to sharpen them more often and replace them more frequently. A "normal" pencil (#2 in school, for scantrons) is an HB which is right at the center and the base of this scale. For beginners, there is really no need to get pencils that run the full gamut, and I do not have a pencil for each increment because one step doesn't make a huge difference. The pressure you use can also make up for those in-between steps. I only have the evens (6H, 4H, 4H, HB, 2B...) and then I have a 9H and 9B (I have never seen 10H or 10B in stores.)

So enough with the graphite lesson for the day. Like I said, I picked up my lightest pencil, and began the actual drawing. Because I used an HB pencil for the sketch (not necessary, I actually just used a mechanical pencil because I hadn't gotten my pencils out) I had to erase the sketched lines before I drew back in with the hard-lead pencil. Why do this? Because when you sketch, you tend to draw in lines that may or may not actually exist as lines in the final drawing (outlines if you will, boundaries) and they will be distracting if left in. 

Here's an example; I erased the sketched lines around her mouth and nose...

...before I went back in with my pencil. This is also a good example to show that even with my lightest/hardest lead pencil, I was still able to create a range of lights and darks. The inside of her mouth, however, was the darkest dark I could achieve with that particular pencil.

Then I took the 9H to the majority of the rest of the piece, focusing primarily on the face. As you'll see, this is something I almost always do in a portrait that I do not do with my landscapes and still lifes. (Yes, apparently the plural of still life isn't still "lives" but "lifes".) Because a portrait is so high pressure, and the importance of getting a likeness is so high, I usually grid off the canvas or paper to get proportions, and I usually begin with the face. Nothing is worse than painting almost everything and the face ends up all wrong. Better it go wrong at the beginning so you can start over, right?

Then I moved to a softer pencil and continued adding shadow and darkening places I had already hit with the 9H. This process is also helpful because the darker the pencil line, the harder it is to erase, so if you make a mistake, or something looks off, you can try to fix it as you go, or erase it with relative ease, and move on.

Next pencil, a step darker.

Moving on to her hair as well.

Eraser time! Now I took an eraser, rubbed it on a clean sheet of paper to clean it off, and also to form the best point I could, then went in and added the hairs over her face.

At this point, I wanted to work on the background to make sure I had some of the tones on her face correct. Tone is the lightness or darkness of a color. One of the most important things to remember when painting or drawing is to find and capture the lightest light and the darkest dark, then the in-between tones are easier to place.

Starting her clothes. I love the stripes and polka dots! I started again with the 9H and worked my way up.

Finally, after getting her clothes and most of the background the way I liked it, I took the eraser, cleaned it again (I needed to do this repeatedly because I was removing so much lead) and worked in her "fly aways".

There you have it! Precious little Aven, captured in graphite. I hope Amy likes it, and that you found this fascinating and/or helpful.

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TBT - Titus and Micah, 2009

In the summer of 2009 I was working at a Redcloud Ranch, a Christian family camp in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. It was during that summer, while I was working, that I met my husband. We had a handful of conversations in person before our relationship turned electronic/long distance–he went back to Colorado Springs to finish his last year at the Air Force Academy and I eventually went back to Austin. We kept in touch via email, phone calls and Skype. Eleven months later we were married. Six months into our relationship, Christmas was coming up and we were going to celebrate with both families. Inspired by the film The Family Stone, I decided to do a drawing for his family that I could make prints of to give to each of them. But what to draw?

I eventually decided on a portrait of Brian's nephews, Titus and Micah. They were the only grandkids on his side at that time, and of all the members of the family, they were the ones that I could see everyone enjoying a drawing of. So one night I whipped out my pencils, chose a photo off Facebook, and drew until I was finished–it was a long night.

At the time I had a very lovely (and equally as expensive), professional printer and was able to make a quality print for each member of the family–the boys' parents were given the original. [I say "at the time" because as I was moving out and preparing to move overseas, I accidentally dropped a thumb tack into the printer while I was taking down a poster. Aarg!? It has never worked since. (sad face) I have taken it to multiple places to see if they can find the tack/fix it, but no one was able to help. To compound the sadness...I had already purchased (and could no longer return) a year's worth of ink cartridges for this 6 cartridge printer...ouch.]

So here it is, the pencil drawing of Titus (older) and Micah (younger):

And just like in the movie, everyone seemed to like the drawing. Unlike the movie, the weekend with his family wasn't an incredible disaster of drama and unfortunate circumstances. We did get engaged though!!

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Throw Back Thursday - Skull, 2001

Technology amazes me. Here I am, sitting in the waiting room, waiting for my name to be called for my doctor's appointment when I suddenly remember that I missed my TBT picture for this week. I quickly search the App Store on my phone to see if it's possible to create a post while I sit here...and sure enough, there's an app for that! Thankfully, I have a few photos of past creative endeavors on my phone.

In middle school I discovered Prismacolor  drawing pencils (high quality colored pencils) during a summer art class with Tim High. By high school I had received a set from my parents for my birthday/Christmas and used them almost exclusively from freshman through my sophomore year for my artwork. They were definitely my medium of choice, and I began completing portraits as gifts for people. 

There was a guy in my art class sophomore year that was very talented, but almost everything he made was dark and creepy. We made an agreement to swap pieces with one another before the school year was over--which is why the subject matter here is darker than usual for me. 

Turns out he didn't make anything for me, but since I had promised him this drawing, and had made it for him in particular, I gave it to him anyway. It was one of my favorite pieces to date and I was sad to let it go. 

So that's my Throw Back Thursday on a Friday. Have a great weekend. 

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Throw Back Thursday - A Hamburger's Perspective, 2004

So this was a quick pencil drawing assignment for one of my freshman year foundation art classes in college. The assignment was on perspective, and about choosing a unique perspective from which to draw. I must have been hungry–which makes sense because these classes were always 4 hours long and this particular one was from 8am-noon–because I chose to draw from the perspective of a hamburger on a picnic table.

I always want to refer to this one as "From an Ant's Perspective" because the hamburger is nowhere to be seen. In fact, you may never have guessed it was a hamburger and not a sandwich or french fries had I not told you. But alas, the hamburger was the intended subject, so any other speculation stops here. I'm reminded of my art history classes and how often I asked myself, "Apart from the artist actually writing down all this information, how can we know his intent here?"

I remember the hardest thing about this drawing was deciding how to draw the Coca Cola cup. The perspective for a normal cylindrical object in one point perspective is relatively simple–the contour lines extend out to the vanishing point. Even the salt shaker that tapers at the top was easy–just slightly exaggerate the angles of a normal cylinder and you've got it. But a cup that tapers at the bottom, set at perspective in the opposite direction just looks wrong. The cup is larger at the top, closer to the hamburger and taller than the ketchup bottle. So this perspective makes sense theoretically, but in implementation, it still seems wrong. It just goes to show you how differently hamburgers see things than we do. Perspective makes all the difference. That is today's life lesson, folks.

I hope you enjoy this silly drawing as much as I enjoyed thinking of the concept.

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