Catalina Wine Mixer

Before leaving for this vacation, my good friend Lupe decided to throw together a "Catalina Wine Mixer" and sent out a questionnaire for everyone to fill out. Once the majority of our friends showed up the info would be posted as a fun ice breaker to introduce everybody to one another.  In order to jazz it up I was asked to do some drawings to represent some of the answers people gave. I gave the drawings away after and used a watercolour moleskin and paint set I have never used before.

Here is my first drawing for the choice between day or night. I said daytime was my favourite, but in the Central American climate night was far cooler so I slept during a lot of the day.

My room mate Ray wanted to participate by lending a helping hand and finished off the colouring.

The next three drawings are for peoples favourite sex positions. I drew one of the local male dogs doggie mounting a girl who is NOT Lupe.

After a quick application of watercolour and washes it was taped down to the table for practitioners to enjoy.

Mine is Cowgirl, I'm not going to expound the benefits here but I did make an inside joke of it between me and my good friend Dom, I managed to keep this drawing a secret until the day of the mixer where she was surprised, plus I let her keep the piece.

Here is is with a splash of paint. Notice how white the guy laying down with the ears is, I'm not that tan. lol.

Here is Dom tallying the results of the survey and making the lists for display at the mixer. She is much more tan that the drawing and didn't actually have a cowboy hat.

The final choice in the survey was Missionary. Its a transitional move really, or for the lazy, so Lupe and I agreed it is boring, so to jazz it up a bit I made it a legs up drawing. A pope giving it to a nun on a cloud in heaven.

Here it is done with a splash of paint.
These really had people arguing about what position is best and why. Sex really starts passionate and heated debates at the Catalina Wine mixer!

What's your favourite position?

Draw 'til you drop - figure drawing day 2, final session

It was a long haul but I was determined to finish the day with a stack of sketches under my arm and a sh*t eating grin across my face. I noticed the huge transformation of hand eye coordination and skill after two days. I may have stated out rusty but it's like riding a bike and now I'd like to beat my time, win the race and learn some new tricks.

This one was graphite on watercolour paper. I am much more efficient getting the line work down and with proper proportions. This is a more difficult task when drawing from life. However it is an important skill to develop for any artist.

Working on sculpting mass and dimensionality by pushing my values I also added in the reflection but decided on keeping it looser. To help set off the shape of the figure without relying on line as much I shaded in the dark circle behind her.

With a little bit of time left, I pushed a few more areas and drew some birds and patterns on the blanket below.

There was still a little bit of time left in the session..........
Here is a colour sketch with copic markers. It was drawn from the opposite angle view across the room.

Draw 'til you drop - figure drawing Day 2, afternoonsession

Drawing the nude from life.

Here are two from the morning session done on watercolour  paper.

I like how loose and soft they are and how the charcoal looks dry on this paper when it is not smudged.

 Here is the next model, i a 45min. - hour pose drawn with red pencil on canvas paper.

Here is the better part of this piece up close to reveal the texture of the pad.


This is the next standing pose, drawn first in pencil then the model took a break.

 After the break I felt inspired to use some copic markers, which dragged the charcoal all over the place and wrecked their tips, but it made for an interesting experiment.

 Here is a final piece from this session done on compressed charcoal.

Draw 'til you drop - figure drawing Day 1

Who gets up this early on a Saturday morning, well clearly a lot of artists determined to improve their craft.

 

 The early session began with Charlie and some quick warm up gestural sketches in my sketchbook. I used a red Stadford animation pencil and a little vine charcoal.

Here are a few more longer poses, the one at the bottom of the page is done in yellow highlighter. I also did a coloured male seated and a laying pose not included in this blog.

This model pose was also coloured with Copic markers in the last remaining 5 min of the pose.

This pose was sketched in vine charcoal on large format bound watercolour paper.

Here is a large charcoal drawing Charlie on canvas paper. I am focusing more on my values while keeping proper proportions while at this week-end drawing extravaganza.

In the cut!

Got my biz cards and cut my "Batista" stencil tonight.

Here it is after 3 blades went dull slicing out the thick watercolor rag paper. I think it took about 2.5 hrs. It needs to be tested and possible tweaked after I see how it turns out.

Here are my 18pt. recycled Kraft business cards from Jukeboxprint.com. I am stoked they turned out so good. I cant wait to start handing them out, 495 more to go ;)

On my way back to my truck after picking up my business cards I saw this billboard. At first I was pissed and was promising I would never drink Molson, but then I looked at the cool black and gold label and the squiggly mounted art campaign and felt that the ad was beginning to work, maybe.

One more thing:

 I may have made an expensive mistake. I entered an online art competition to discover a new artist, there was a $50 fee but I got so caught up in the dream that I went thru with it. So now I need to enlist all the help I can get. I have 22 days to get people to do one simple thing, its all online you don't have to go anywhere or do anything or spend money. All you have to do is go to the page (Click on the link here!) and vote for my portfolio by clicking on the right hand button with the star titled "Collect Me". Pass it on, help me out if you can.

Pretty please with sugar on top!