2nd entry for July 13, 2013

(Tired of just drawing a model in a blank space over and over? In short time spans there is not time to investigate much in the way of the background space, and in figure studies people are often situated in a bit of a limbo.
As an artist, the human figure can be treated as things other than just a literal form - it can be abstracted, or set into some context or fragments can be chosen as most significant.
From August 6 - 9 I'm teaching a 4-day intensive called "Figure Concepts" at the TSA. Long poses (some 1/2 day, some full-day) with props and background set-ups will give people time to work on long drawings or fast painted studies. The aim is to consider what you're communicating through the figure work you're doing, and how you are using the surrounding space to aid in that. More details available on that here.)

These are two 15-minute studies and a 20-minute one at the bottom. These are also done with a range of Copic markers in different values. Some people like to work straight from light to dark, but I'm finding it better to start with a mid-tone, and put in some thing really dark early on. Otherwise the light paper can fool me into thinking pale shadow areas are darker than I think.