1st entry for Aug 30, 2015

This Saturday and Sunday, Sept 12th and 13th I'll be showing -and happy to sell - selected figure drawings at the Queen West Art Crawl. Trinity-Bellwoods Park, Booth M42, on the North-west curve of the parks big circle path.11 - 6 both days, rain or shine.

Scott was working at the Jam Factory Arts Collective session that Sunday, and it was good to get a male person to work with this time around. It has worked out that the majority of sessions I've been able to get to have had women working. Nothing wrong with that, but it's nice to have a bit more gender balance.
These are some 30-second through to 3-minute studies, all Pitt pen on 18 x 24" sheets of Canson Recycled Sketch paper.

5th entry for Aug 28, 2015

 It's coming - the Queen West Art Crawl happens this weekend, Sept. 12 and 13, at Trinity-Bellwoods Park. I'll be in Booth M42, on the north-west curve of the big path in the park, from 11- 6 daily. Come say hi, I'll have quite a number of life studies to look at (and buy, if you like).

These are 15-minute studies, with some additional working into them later. The top two are grey pigment ink and a black Prismacolour stick.
The third down started as grey ink line and a woodless graphite for shading that I washed over with water and then overlaid with oil-based pencil.
The bottom one is water-soluble graphite with oil-based pencil on top.
The top two are on lightweight Stonehenge paper, and the lower two are on heavier-weight watercolour paper. All are 18 x 24"

4th entry for Aug 28, 2015

These are some 10-minute studies. the top three are Pitt pen on 18 x 24" sheets of Canson Recycled Sketch paper, with some initial help from a pencil sketch.
The bottom one is a grey pigment pen line drawing and some HB graphite stick shading on an 18 x 24" sheet of watercolour paper. it does give an airiness to the image, but I found the texture of the cold-press I tried was too strong

3rd entry for Aug 28, 2015

 These are four three-minute studies and a 5-minute one at the bottom. Al are on 18 x 24" sheets of Canson Recycled Sketch paper; the top four are with a medium-point Pitt pen, and the bottom is a calligraphy point Pitt pen.

2nd entry for Aug 28, 2015

Calibrating Expectations 2:
These are 1-minute and 2-minute studies. I usually want to try to set down the specifics of the person I'm drawing, but there's only so much that can be done in short time spans. For a minute and up I tend to shift from scribbly `pure' gestures into `rapid contour' line studies. There's no time to fret about proportions, so i just set things down and restate if necessary and there's still time. Two minutes and up gives time to pay a little bit of attention to faces and hair, but too much and the pose is over.
These are a medium-point Pitt pen on 18 x 24" sheets of Canson Recycled Sketch paper.

1st entry for Aug 28, 2015

Calibrating expectations:  On the Friday I went to ARC Studio, and Petra was working. These are 30-second studies.
I had only brought along what turned out to be a nearly dry calligraphy point marker, so it was not at all able to flow at the rate needed for rapid gestural scribbling. So I used a piece of 6B woodless graphite instead for these.
In thirty seconds there is really not the time to try for any specific details, and trying to set them down is an exercise in frustration. So the emphasis here is on being fast and responsive, and trying to get the `feel' of the poses, and a bit of a sense of the particular person's general shapes.
They are a really good workout.  these are all 18 x 24" sheets of some generic bond paper.

4th entry for Aug 26, 2014

These are 10-minute studies, with some additional later working on the top and bottom ones. I tried working with a grey marker pen and soft graphite. the top one is on a 12 x 15" sheet of Bristol paper, the other two on 18 x 18" watercolour paper.
The lowest one also has oil-based pencil and a background wash of powdered graphite.