Directed Studies Week 2

As I mentioned last week, I am conducting a Directed Studies class with a local art student. For my demonstration for the second week I took a piece of photo reference supplied to the student for an assignment last semester. That assignment was to create a character from the reference. I wanted to take that same reference and show how I go about using photo reference to help influence and improve my drawing. This is the end result of the drawing demo, a monkey man with a lot on his mind...

Simian Orator
© 2011 Christopher Burdett

Giving my student the option, he asked that I create a character along the lines of the one that he did, a orator type figure, rather then one using a weapon. I opened one of my animal books and came upon a howler monkey and I let that be the reference for the monster side of the drawing. While letting the reference influence my choices I pushed and pulled the anatomy and altered the attire. Always looking to the reference to tell me how I should go about defining my forms. LOOK FIRST and then DRAW SECOND.... repeat. Here is the final drawing next to the supplied reference...

Figure reference and drawing.
LOOK FIRST and then DRAW SECOND

You should be able to quickly pick out where I stuck closely to the reference and where I did not once placed next to the reference... hopefully you could not when just looking at the drawing. Once completed I got out the drawing from week 1 in which the drawing was mostly influenced by the silhouette that I drew. While I was looking at animal reference the waste majority of the drawing was influenced by my experience and the symbols in my head. I put the two drawings side by side to show the difference in feel even in my own drawings when more reference is used...

Week 1 and 2 drawing comparison.
Image on the left is mostly out of my head while the image on the right is much more informed from reference.

If I was creating the image on the left for a project I would have gotten a photo of myself in the pose suggested by the silhouette before beginning the final drawing to help fill in the gaps and add a level of realism.

As a reminder, if you are in the Tallahassee area Friday night, I will be appearing at GEEK NIGHT 2011 on the Florida State University campus! Hope to see you there!

That is all for today, see you back here on Friday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com

Directed Studies Week 1

I am conducting a Directed Studies course in Illustration with a local art student and yesterday marked the first day of the fall semester. I got things rolling with a drawing demonstration and took him through an entire drawing, start to finish. I gave him the option to choose from a couple of different options and the idea of a bipedal reptilian monster was picked. I got started on some silhouettes first...

Monster silhouettes!

I quickly got as many of these on the paper trying out different shapes, forms and arrangements looking for something interesting. I let the student pick and we went with (1). I pointed out that some of the smallest and less defined, (2) & (3), to me at least offered a very interesting starting point. I also took this opportunity to talk about planning ahead and fully working up your ideas before moving onto a finished piece. Using (4) I pointed out the sudden difference it made when I added big feet to this silhouette. It suddenly became less threatening and to me looks like it is wearing clown shoes. While working on your silhouettes is the right time to figure these types of issue out... not while you are finishing up an illustration.

As I mentioned (1) was picked as the silhouette to move forward with so that is what I did. Since I could not spare the time to electronically enlarge the silhouette so I did it by hand. I made sure to have my animal books out in front of me and before I started on my sketching I made sure to flip through the pages to find interesting lizards and crocodiles. Understanding the differences between 'silly' and 'scary' animals is very important skill to have. While a frog is amazingly cool and offers tons of important reference cues it is not scary. An alligator on the other hand offers lots and lots of scary reference cues. Time passes and the drawing comes together...

Bipedal reptile monster!
© 2011 Christopher Burdett

From start to finish it was just over three hours of work while talking and explaining the entire process. After the fact I of course thought it would have been neat to capture images of the drawing as it developed... of well. Next time maybe. Here is a side by side comparison of the silhouette and final drawing, you can see the changes that began the moment I sketched out the silhouette by hand. The overall gesture and form is still there though.

Silhouette and drawing comparison.

That is all for another exciting week on the blog, see you back here on Monday! Until then...

For more samples of my work or to contact me regarding my availability head over to my website: www.christopherburdett.com