Early June 2013: Jephyr's Most Recent Sketchbook Drawings

Hello,

Hope your summer is off to a good start!  We've already been having 105 to 111 degree days here in Phoenix.

I'd promised myself that I would tame the jungle in my yard as soon as the spring semester ended so I've been working both early in the morning and late in the evening...avoiding some of the heat...to accomplish that. 

I'm nearing the half way point...at least on the initial go-round...but these temperatures are ridiculous.  Whew!

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Fortunately, as I wrote in my last post on 5-22-13 I've still been finding a lot more time to work on my own art since school ended too.

I have several digital "paintings" I'm working on...and have been enjoying drawing a LOT in my sketchbook.

It's pretty interesting to discover how quickly I get rusty if I don't draw all the time...and then how rapidly it seems to comes back once I start up again.

Today, I thought I'd share some more of my latest sketches:

^ ^ ^ ^  Not to sound like a broken record...but this guy started out by using the "scribble technique".

I just begin putting down some random scribbles on the page and then look for patterns in them.

Once I start to "see" something in the scribble I begin to work that into a final sketch.

Since the human eye is fine tuned to see faces many of these wind up as my cartoony/caricature people like the guy above

In this case I kinda saw Keith Richards at first and worked toward that. 

Later I began to see more of F. Murray Abraham's, "Salieri" (from the movie Amadeus), and finished it with more of that in mind.

- BTW...as I sat in a coffee house finishing this drawing two separate guys came up to me to talk about it.

When I mentioned Keith Richards and the movie Amadeus, neither of these two 20 somethings really knew who/what I was talking about.

That made me feel ancient...like some old codger when I was a kid going on about a silent movie star I'd never heard of.

OUCH! 

LOL    ;)

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I wish every drawing I did was as easy as this guy!  ^ ^ ^ ^

 

I started with another scribble and immediately saw that magnificent profile.  As I worked on it...it was like it was almost drawing itself!

 

I'd just watched all three Pirates of the Caribbean movies and clearly had pirates on the brain.

 

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^ ^ ^ ^   Not a whole lot to say about this guy...just another chance for me to play with exaggeration and "caricature" of the face. 

If this was going in a portfolio...there'd be a lot I'd tighten up.  But I called him "done" so I could move on.

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^ ^ ^ ^  I tend to like drawing craggy old male faces because they can be a lot of fun to exaggerate...shading and rendering all those nooks and crannies.

But for this one, I decided to draw the face of a young woman I'd seen in an old movie on TV.  She had amazing eyes...and so I set out to capture her from memory.

The final drawing above ain't even close representing her...but I was enjoying just letting this drawing "happen"!

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Man did I sweat over this one!   ^ ^ ^ ^

I call it Prisoner Jx-25.

I met with my friend Elkanah to have some grub and draw...and was scribbling on the page to get started.  At first I "saw" an astronaut type guy in a space chariot and kinda sketched some of the details in.

I kept saying that I wasn't happy with it at all but Elkanah said he was confident I'd figure something out.

I found that to be very encouraging...and so over the next few days kept working on this page.

Finally a weird head with horns all over it began to emerge.  I still wasn't very happy with it...but as I eliminated some of the horns...I began to see a wart-hog type head...and at last I felt like I had something going on.

Then I began to add the body...and later even used some reference photos and anatomy books...trying to make the musculature, though exagerated, a little more legit (although I still took a lota liberties in the end).

The last piece of the puzzle fell into place when I was looking at this drawing across the room and realized I had it's eyes too high on the head.   Once I moved them down to where you see them now...this sketch/character design finally felt right to me.

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Well...that's it for now.

Thanks as always for stopping by!