2nd entry for Oct 18, 2015

These are, I believe, two 10-minute studies, a 15-minute one and a 20-minute at the bottom. The top two are Progresso woodless pencil on Canon Recycled Sketch paper. The lower two are oil-based pencil on Canson XL Watercolour paper.
Posting this session marks a personal benchmark. My math may not be dead-on, but I am confident that as of now I have 10,000 drawn studies of people posted on this blog. This blog began then as a replacement for an earlier Yahoo 360 blog I was keeping.
At first I was more picky in what I posted, but over time I decided it would be interesting to be able to see the context of the range of quality within which good drawings occur. So I have made this a sort of `process diary' and posted anywhere from 50% to 80% of most drawing sessions.
There has been a lot of material explorations up to now, and it's all here to see.
At this stage I'm not going to altogether quit posting here, as I like sharing work, but I am going to tail off how much goes up, and stick mostly to sharing strong process pieces, and unusual or out-of-the-ordinary sessions here.
A select number of the strongest studies will be up on the Tumblr as well.

Oh, and if you're feeling magnanimous, you can treat me to a coffee or help with some costs via the Donate button over on the side.

2nd entry for July 21, 2014

These are two 15-minute studies above, and a 45-minute study below. All are water-soluble graphite on 18 x 24" sheets of Canson Montval watercolour paper.
The bottom one has some further post-session additional graphite added.
As time has passed, I have come to treat this blog as a drawing diary and a documentation of my process drawing people. That process slides, morphs and evolves slowly, which you can see if you review previous years' posts.  Of the figure studies I do, I always cull out the bottom 25 to 30% prior to posting any- unless it is an unusual situation where I am using the studies as documentation.
There is a big middle-patch of works that I feel are worth enjoying briefly, and a medium like this is good for this kind of ephemeral sharing. I feel it underscores how many not-quite studies have to happen for the good spontaneous ones to emerge. Also how the strong work is fuelled by steady practice. And that, like anyone else, I do my fair share of not-so-strong work. Some studies jump out to me as the `keepers', and you see them here in their context of production.
I have started a new Tumblr blog to document those stronger pieces. It's titled `From The Stream', and on it I am posting the top 10% - 15% of studies - the ones I feel are particularly strong or unusual. I'm also going back over the past couple of years to pull out my picks of past work.
There is a link on the sidebar, and you can also access it here.