More Sketchbook Faces

More from the book, and out of my head (still a little bit sore from this flu bug). These aren't the most perfect things. But one thing I've learned, is that to do good work, you have to take chances and allow yourself to fail, even spectacularly at times. If I wanted it to be perfect all the time, I could repeat something that's been successful in the past, and become the master of drawing cute cats, or big-headed cartoon characters, for instance. Like this artist, who's won local fame drawing a certain kind of pretty woman's face over and over. But I'd rather stretch, even though it means occasionally lousy drawings.

Still trying to work out laziness in my drawing, which means if I draw something a certain way, such as an eye or the shape of a mouth, it comes out convincing; trying to get away from shortcuts. That's what's good, actually, about drawing from life, or photos. They take you away from the tricks you're used to. Give you new ideas. Of course, models are expensive, and photos are "cheating," unless you take them yourself. In my case, not having a studio and thousands of dollars, that means pictures of myself and my cats, or going out into public, or trying to wheedle my friends ...



I've tried doing underdrawing, to make sure the features line up (they usually don't), but that pretty much always ruins the drawing: it's stiff, and out of proportion anyways. Working on this, however.

The challenge here is to use tricks (or what some artists call "aids") to make the art good, but not lose the spontaneity. I draw easily out of my head, without planning, or second-guessing. Trouble is, I have a hard time seeing in the early stages whether something's technically right. Because everything has to be right in the basic structure, or the drawing's screwed up.

Here, one can take time away to let it sit, and then come back (not good under a deadline), or one can look at it in a mirror, or also scan it into the computer and flip it. Still haven't got all this down into a system, so that a perfect drawing would result every time.