Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Geary's Drawings

OK. By popular demand (at least it was popular with me) I am posting some of my drawings.




This first one is a drawing on Mi Tientes paper, which is a medium gray. Darks are added with pencil and the white highlights are made with a white pencil. The paper forms the medium value. This one was done about the third week after I started taking the class.

The next one was done a week later, using the same technique on the same kind of paper. Besides being able to practice drawing the shapes, the emphasis was on finding where the highlights were to go, and in visualizing how the medium value of the paper fit into the overall drawing.

The next one is about a month later -- pencil on white paper. It just looks gray because the camera tries to make the overall picture register at a medium gray, and since most of the drawing is white, the camera renders it as gray. Our instructor seems to have an endless supply of objects to draw. The fruit is actually plastic, so she can use the same ones over and over. Here the difficulty was that the bottle was partially full, so part of the bottle is semi-transparent, and part is not. Plus, the plunger extends down into the bottle and there are lots of reflections.

This one is charcoal on charcoal paper, done last October. Here the paper is rubbed with charcoal dust (just using a paper towel to do the rubbing) to make it a medium gray, and then darks are added with charcoal and lighter areas are made by erasing the charcoal. The good part is that ANYTHING can be erased entirely and drawn over, or, if you want to start over, you just have to rub the entire paper with your paper towel and start all over again with what looks like a new sheet of paper. I spent most of my time on the cup and just sort of quickly sketched in the fruit at the last moment. I was very impressed with how easy charcoal is to work with. The downside, of course, is that any rubbing after you are done, and the picture tends to disappear.

This is the same cup, but with lemons piled inside (I mention that they are lemons, in case you can't tell). This one is pencil on paper, and done last week, but since it is the same object as in the charcoal drawing, I put it here so the two drawings can be compared. You can see how, or if, anything is better or worse for having been drawn three months apart.




This is my first attempt at a portrait, done over Christmas week. This is the third attempt to draw this one, and probably the best of the three. The girl is Eva Green, and the scene is from the movie "The Kingdom of Heaven" .




The last one is of Lucy Liu, pencil on paper. I did this one today during class.

3 comments:

Maren said...

Dad, these are really good! I like th Lucy Liu one and the cup with the lemon best. The clear bottle looks impossible with all the reflections and refractions! Nicely done.

Geary said...

Note that if you click on a picture, you get the full-sized picture, which gives you a REAL close-up of the drawing.

Anonymous said...

Looks like my comments got inadvertently erased. Trying again. Great to find the site....love the portraits...Lucy Liu in particular. I've had a passing connection with graphics myself since just before retirement. (www.excaliburprod.com) Congratulations on the 12 grandbabies...I only have 8 despite having 5 years on you. Would really like to get back in touch (We're living in Atlanta now). jalpern@excaliburprod.com is my 'regular' email. Please say hi to Carol....

Best,
Jay