Just messing around.

After a day of revising the Flow Receiver application (almost a complete rewrite and a whole new UI) in preparation for FITC SF in August, I spent some time at Rontoms being anti-social.

Referenced this photo by Patric Shaw.

+ View on Flickr.

Spent some time at Aalto Lounge last night, winding down from an 11-hour programming session. It’s so dark in that place, I honestly didn’t have any idea what these sketches even looked like until this morning.

Yesterday at the BACAA open studio sessions, I started a new drawing. Same model. Same pose. This time I wanted to try to do a portrait. At this point, I’m getting in the first layer of the darker values. I think I concentrated too much on getting the rendering of the form “right” in the first pass, which is a big no-no.

The proportion of her lips and their distance to her nose is off right now, which is why the lips are half-erased — a reminder for myself next week to start with the fixing of that area.

I’m probably going to end up doing what I’ve done in the past with some of my other charcoal drawings which is get things looking technically decent, then sort of smudge over everything… lighten things up… get things “unfocused”… and finally go back through with a more gestural quality to the mark-making.

These past few weeks at the studio sessions have forced me to focus on measuring and really observing: two things I don’t generally spend enough time on.

By the end of this session, I was mentally finished with this drawing. Conté’s tricky because it’s very difficult to erase, and things get muddy if you layer too much. So I had to let go of the mismeasured stuff and just focus on coming out of there with a rendered drawing that was good enough to stand as a “technical study.”

I did a few drawings like this in college, so this was really a chance for me to compare where I am now with where I was then. To be honest, not much has changed in terms of skill level / observation.

This is a representation of the 180,000+ points of data that were captured during the processing of making my last drawing. They’re quick sketches done with Processing and the toxiclibs Processing library (specifically for the Verlet physics engine).

The first step here was to create something cumulative, just so I could see the data over time. The end goal (originally) was to create a data renderer that created a static piece (or pieces) that could stand side-by-side with the original drawing, like a diptych. But embedded in that goal is an attempt to bring forth the energy and motion that went into the original drawing. That’s why I created this whole system in the first place.

I’m not there yet, but I think you need to swim in the data for a little bit before you can get a sense of what it really is.

My first contribution to the Constraints project that Nate and I are collaborating on. Basically, we want to make drawing more of a habit. And something we both get better at. So we impose some constraints and see how things go.

Black conté and white Prismacolor NuPastel
18″ x 24″

Here’s a shot of the drawing in progress before any pastel was applied:

+ View the piece on Flickr.

A figure study done in white and black conté on white 70lb. drawing paper. Measures approx. 10″ x 15″. Trying to loosen up a bit and use a familiar medium in new ways. Completely inspired by some of Mark Horst‘s conté studies. That guy is seriously amazing.